The Economic System General Notes: This game throws money at you from nowhere. You can very easily have every Sim become fabulously wealthy, and you have to work very hard to keep Sims poor. This is a game I'm playing for my amusement, if I have to put more effort into keeping track of finances than I put into balancing my checkbook, it stops being amusing. So, I'm nowhere near as strict as a lot of people are in deleting ill-gotten funds: I cannot be bothered to keep track of family funds on that level. That said, I have found that my game style does allow me to have Sims living on the edge of poverty, Sims who are comfortably middle class, and of course, very wealthy Sims without my having to delete anyone's monies or otherwise restrict their cash flow. I have never used a money cheat in this neighborhood. I also haven't used any kind of reward object that generates money. They aren't specifically banned, if I had a story driven reason to want pics of a Sim using a counterfeit machine or harvesting a money tree, I would. Not something I have planned, but it isn't ruled out. But I would only use those types of objects for the story pictures, so if they aren't in pics, they aren't being used behind the scenes. Careers: I have completely banned all 'career' jobs. Everyone in this neighborhood must own a business or work in an owned business, or find other ways to pay the bills, such as digging for treasure, beachcombing, farming,writing novels, painting or dating for gifts, etc. Basically, I'm allowing Sims to make money in any way the game allows, except for the career jobs. My goal is to have more individuality & realness in their lives, so I wouldn't be exploiting any of those methods to get rich Sims. Rather, the Sims most likely to be beachcombing for cash are the ones that will only do it to make enough to pay the bills this week, and will live on the edge of poverty most of the time. (Currently, Pleasure sim & game addict Jessica Sims is filling this role: her family funds is rarely over 1,000 simoleons) I won't have a whole neighborhood of novelists & painters, just one or two at a time, and they will be dedicated to their craft. Which for me is far more satisfying than sending my Sim out everyday to an 'artist' job. Another way for Sims to make money is to perform jobs for other Sims in the neighborhood. I use the Sim Logical teleporter cat to summon a Sim to a lot & make them selectable, and then have them perform the job (raking leaves, repairing broken items, housecleaning). I then use Pescado's money order to pay for the service. Wage is determined by what I think the service is worth, based on the skill required for the job, and the time it takes. Astrid Spitzig as a teen got 250 simoleons a week to rake leaves, teen Serena Turner received a trained cat as payment for repairing the Kat family's broken computer. The cat would have sold for just under 2k simoleons because of its training. NPCs: Why am I bringing in my neighborhood Sims to rake leaves & repair computers when there are NPCs that do that stuff? Because I have banned NPCs. Well, I can't ban them all: I get newspaper (mod from DJS Sims makes paper cost $6) & mail delivery, I get burglars & therefore I get cops (I would ban the cops if my Sims could fight off the burglar. Even if they had a chance of losing, same as the cops. But since they can't do anything about the burglar at all, I do allow the alarm.) I also allow the fireman, though the Sims actually can put out fires. I probably shouldn't. I have banned all delivery service NPCs, except for the one that brings your custom novel (FT) and vacation photo album (BV) because there is no other way to obtain those items. No food delivery of any kind, no phone pet adoption. Also, no maid service, no repairman, no nanny, no gardening service. (no headmaster, but there also is no school, so he is doubly banned) Garden Club inspection is allowed. Technically, they are townies, not NPCs, and the service they perform cannot be done buy a regular Sim. On unowned community lots, I cannot place any objects that spawn NPCs, so no cash registers, bars, DJs, restaurants, etc. Those things can only be used on owned business lots, where I will need to hire employees to service those items. Exceptions: I'm using the shipped Maxis vacation lots (with some changes here & there), which spawn all kinds of NPCs. Since the vacation spots aren't in my community, and I can't own businesses there, it doesn't matter that there are NPC employees. Any special vacation NPCs are also allowed. Free Time hobby lots: I didn't want to wait for clean templates to come out to add this ep, so my neighborhood has the special hobby NPCs generated. Some secret hobby lots also have NPC spawning objects like bars. I have been visiting some of the secret lots, just to see them, and if something happens during one of these visits that would be good for the story, I'll use it. But so far I haven't seen any I want to actually use at all, and I'd rather just build my own lots for hobbyists than get into editing these secret lots. So, secret hobby lots are allowed whatever NPCs Maxis stuck in them, but they aren't likely to get used more than once, if ever. Wage & Price restrictions: Business owners must pay fair wages to all employees. I use a mod by JM Pescado, relevantwages, which affects how 'fair wages' are determined. Business owners must also charge fair prices: no price gouging! Most items are sold at 'average' price, as determined by the game. Some items can be sold for 'expensive', if they are a luxury, like jewelry. It is very subjective, but I'm not trying to find ways to exploit the system, I'm trying to set up shops that are both playable for the shop owners and useful for my non-owning playables to shop in. Nothing is cheap, but nothing is very expensive, either. Food and Agriculture: Since I'm disallowing delivery NPCs, Sims must buy food from a store when they run out. Most Sims have at least a small garden to stock their fridges with. I use TJs Low Food Warning mod to alert me when my fridge is getting low, so I don't have a third trimester pregnant Sim starving at 3am suddenly realize she's out of food. Sims may not buy a new fridge when the old one runs out just to avoid food shopping. Buying a new fridge can only happen when a Sim is upgrading a kitchen: the new fridge must be a more expensive model than the current. There is a strict organic gardening law: no bag fertilizer, only compost. No spraying, ever. It's a hippie thing I do in any neighborhood I play.