How should I spend gold?

Is there any reason to save gold in Diablo II? With the fairly high percentage you appear to lose on death, should one just blow it all gambling as much as possible? What is there to do with it save resurrecting dead companions and repairing gear (which seems a pittance compared to what you can bank)?

I find that I mostly only use gold for potions and scrolls (town portal). With that said, I found that when I started using some really high tier items (such as Runeworded items) that the repair costs were phenomenal (and actually sometimes difficult to cover).

Aside from that, here are a couple of other things I find my money going to:

1. Recruit resurrection (in Lord of Destruction). I remember it costing something like 20,000 gold to bring my mercenary back to life every time it died in late nightmare/hell mode.
2. Random items from the shops that are useful for a specific point in time. Sometimes I find myself having a lot of trouble in a given area because of something that an item at a shop just happens to cover. For example, I remember the store selling a +28% fire resistance belt when I was constantly getting killed by fire-damage enemies.
3. Gambling. You can get some nice items (like uniques) from gambling if you have the money. And by the money I mean a lot of money.

Gambling is a great way to spend that pile of gold. You can get some really awesome magical weapons. In my experience, Gheed will give you best weapons in gambling.

You can also spend money on mercenaries. Get mercenaries with max attack and health.

And of course you should have enough gold so that when you die, you can afford some good gear until you reach your corpse to get old items back.