When can you be considered rich?

[Relativelybest]

Just wondering, how many septims would you say one must amass before ones character can be considered a wealthy person? I'm talking "retire and live well off the loot money, never have to work again" type rich. What would be a realistic figure? Edited July 24, 2012 by Relativelybest

[chocklymon]

Hmm, hard to say since no one can really give a definite answer to this question in real life, but just for fun here is some math I did.

 

Most expensive food item is eight septims (this is for most of the stews, and ignoring all the cheese wheels, because who would want to eat a whole cheese wheel for dinner).

Bread is two septims.

Most expensive (non-quest/unique) drink one hundred septims (Black-Briar Reserve).

 

So a good full meal is 110 septims.

 

110 * 3 * 365 = 120450 for food a year.

Lets say that you live for 30 years after retiring:

120450 * 30 = 3,613,500 for food.

 

The most expensive home is Proudspire Manor, which you can buy for 25,000 septims, plus another 11,000 to fully upgrade it.

So 36,000 septims for housing.

 

A hireling is 500 septims, so lets say the same for a housekeeper, and chef, and say that they need to be paid that amount once a month.

500 * 2 * 12 * 30 = 360,000 for help for 30 years.

 

3,613,500 + 36,000 + 360,000 = 4,009,500 septims.

 

So with 4 million septims, your character should be able to live quite comfortably (and have lots to spare if they go with a cheaper drink).

[Relativelybest]

Sounds like a pretty good estimate, thanks.

 

...Though, put like that, it seems kinda sad that people in the game seem to consider, what, a thousand septims or so at the most to be worth stashing away in treasure chests.

Edited July 24, 2012 by Relativelybest

[Lutine]

Then again, the gold is disproportionate; a house should be worth tons more than thirty years' worth of food.

From a strict roleplaying standpoint, the Septim should be divided into silver and copper coins, with the gold coin being able to buy you some 200 loaves of bread, and the copper coin taking the place of the ingame Septim(Four million copper Septims would set you for life) making thousand-gold treasure stashes actually worth something.

Edited July 24, 2012 by Lutine

[Dubnoman]

Then again, the gold is disproportionate; a house should be worth tons more than thirty years' worth of food.

From a strict roleplaying standpoint, the Septim should be divided into silver and copper coins, with the gold coin being able to buy you some 200 loaves of bread, and the copper coin taking the place of the ingame Septim(Four million copper Septims would set you for life) making thousand-gold treasure stashes actually worth something.

 

Is there a mod that has copper, silver, and gold Septims?

Edited July 24, 2012 by Dubnoman

[Lutine]

Then again, the gold is disproportionate; a house should be worth tons more than thirty years' worth of food.

From a strict roleplaying standpoint, the Septim should be divided into silver and copper coins, with the gold coin being able to buy you some 200 loaves of bread, and the copper coin taking the place of the ingame Septim(Four million copper Septims would set you for life) making thousand-gold treasure stashes actually worth something.

 

Is there a mod that has copper, silver, and gold Septims?

 

Unfortunately not to my knowledge. I bet it could probably done with a lot of scripting. Far out of my league, unfortunately.

[Cipherthe3vil]

There is a mod that adds them. But they weren't too well integrated I think.

 

Nirn just has gold out'a its ears. Gold there is apparently as common as Copper for us :psyduck:

[Lutine]

There is a mod that adds them. But they weren't too well integrated I think.

 

Nirn just has gold out'a its ears. Gold there is apparently as common as Copper for us :psyduck:

 

Hmm... I do want to see a well integrated copper-silver-gold mod. I've slowly been learning how to mod, and have been trying to making a Trading Guild questline, but the lack of diversity in the existing trade system is a big putoff.

[Relativelybest]

There is a mod that adds them. But they weren't too well integrated I think.

 

Nirn just has gold out'a its ears. Gold there is apparently as common as Copper for us :psyduck:

 

But then their equivalent of gold would be, like, ebony I guess.

Edited July 24, 2012 by Relativelybest

[PharmakosChroster]

In order to know what "rich" means in a high fantasy environement, we need to know a bit about real-world economics, particularly medieval economics. For example, a lot of people who have been raised in modern capitalism don't understand what "high taxes" really mean. In medieval cultures, everything was taxed. Births were taxes, deaths were taxed, every transaction was taxed, travel was taxed, weapons were taxed, and there were levies for special expenses on top of that. And of course the church tithes were mandatory, so they were also a kind of tax. Taxes were set by the Exchequer, sufficient to run the kingdom, but it's important to remember that this did not include one's debts to one's feudal lord. The king, for example, was expected to support his own army and the upkeep of his lands and castle out of his own packet and not the kingdom's funds. This means that the king levied taxes on his feudal vassals, who in turn collected rents from his freemen and everything from his serfs (who were considered chattel, his property). So in addition to all the taxes levied by the kingdom, there were also all of the fees, levies, rents, and dues you had to give to your priest, guild, lord, and every other middleman ready with a hand out.

 

In Skyrim, taxes seem to be simplified in the sense that we can assume they're included in the prices given by shopkeepers. Given the markup, we can assume that taxes are pretty reasonable (probably the result of "armies" in Skyrim consisting of, like, eight dudes), but what we don't know is how much rents are. The cost of purchasing a house doesn't include hearth taxes, which were extremely common in medieval times, roughly equivalent to property taxes today. The player seems to be a freedman (not quite the same as a freeman), as a result of escaping custody in the beginning of the game. Eventually the player becomes a thane (of at least one city), at which point sie would be considered a vassal, and subject to providing resources to hir feudal lord (either Balgruuf or Vignar). As a vassal, the player would also be expected to serve a set amount of time per year in military service or pay an amount established by the lord sufficient for purchasing mercenaries to replace the player. In addition, the player would be expected to collect a force of military retainers, who would also serve their time in the lord's armies. In the case of Skyrim, the player's housecarls would be part of that force, but the player would also be required to train and provide for a certain number of footmen and support personnel (such as pages and squires). This is why in order to become thane, it's necessary to purchase property.

 

What total percentage of a household's resources would be taxed (or levied or tithed or so on) depends on how the political winds are blowing. In a time with a weak king, the nobility and the merchants tend to do quite well, with taxes on them being minimal and having a free hand to tax the freemen, peasants, and serfs as heavily as they like. We see such a situation occur in England, under King John, where the bourgeoisie are able to force the king to sign the Magna Carta, thus giving professionals unprecedented protection from the Crown. On the other hand, a powerful king or queen was often much beloved by the peasantry, because it meant the excesses of their feudal lords were curbed, and the Crown used its own treasury to support itself rather then the kingdom's. When the Cromwell's Roundheads rebelled against Charles the Bald, for example, the well-to-do peasantry (the "kulaks" as the Russians call them) and the moneyed professional classes supported Cromwell, while it was the poorest serfs and peasants who gladly fought for the Crown against them. We know from talking to people in Skyrim that Torygg was a weak king, wuth little hold over his jarls. This suggests that while taxes are probably minimal on the merchant classes (which accounts for the relatively low markup in the shops), hearth taxes and the like are probably much, much more onerous. Indeed, we often hear the farmers complaing about how hard they're forced to work, especially given how poorly crops grow in Skyrim's climate. The real expenses for the player, then, are likely to come not from consumption, but from the requirements of vassaldom, which aren't really touched on in-game.

 

To give some idea of the scale of the taxes, the hearth tax in England generally ran about 2-3 shillings per year, per fireplace. 20 shillings made up a pound, which was literally a pound of silver. (Gold was too scarce to be used for ordinary transactions; people would no sooner pull out a gold coin than you would whip out a thousand dollar bill at a convenience store today.) In medieval Italy, a loaf of bread cost abour 4 piccoli. There are 32 piccoli to the grossi, which was the standard silver coin. A single silver coin would buy you 8 loaves of bread. Since we known the Skyrim cost for bread (~2 septims) we can calculate that a septim is worth 1/16th of a grossi. A grossi was 2 grams of silver, so we can estimate that 1 gram of silver = 32 septims. 454 grams = 1 pound, so 14,528 septims = 1 pound sterling. A shilling = 1/20th of a pound, therefore 1 shilling is the equivalent value of 500 septims. We can therefore estimate that the hearth tax on a small thatched cottage would run about 1000-1500 septims per year, or 80-120 septims per month.

 

The average income in medieval Europe was about 1 shilling per week for unskilled labour, and 1 shilling per day for a trained professional soldier in peacetime. Given six households and a *minimum* of six housecarls and at least one general-purpose scullery/cleaning/repair servant to support, wages will be about 7 shillings a day. or about 2500 shillings per year. That 125 pounds sterling, or roughly 1,800,000 septims per year in wages.

 

So, back to the original question of how much is "rich" in Skyrim, let's assume that the player owns a half-dozen homes across Skyrim. Each probably pays the equivalent of two hearths worth of taxes (being rather more than thatched huts), so figure the player will have to pay 12,000 to 18,000 septims a year in hearth taxes, plus 1,800,000 septims in salaries. We'll assume that each household will require about 10% of its value per year in upkeep, and we'll assume an average value of 20,000 septims per house, for a total value of 120,000 septims. A year's worth of upkeep, plus hearth tax, plus salaries, is going to be about 2 million septims per year to run six households. If we define "rich" as having so much money that one need never touch the principle of one's investments, and we assume a simple 10% return on investment, then we can see the player needs a *minimum* of 200,000,000 septims to be considered "rich".