Yeah, I agree with @Drarcuul that it's really easy to make money in the game (steal the plants at the Romance festival and garden is also one of my go-to strategies, also the creative careers; the music licensing thing of one instrument per week is annoying but you can re-license the same song forever...), but... yeah.
The functional community lot thing. Yeah.
If you're not opposed to cheating, you could hire a vendor and then reimburse your Sim with cheats. I've been known to do that for items in rotational play where it's like, "Uhhh, yeah, you're installing LittleMsSam's automatic thermostat for ME, not you, so you can have your money back." Or "Oh look, the cat I spayed with cas.fulleditmode is in heat, you can take her to the vet and spay her and I'll reimburse you." Etc.
All that said, I do understand that if you're on console that takes away the chance to get trophies, which is a major bummer and you probably don't want to do that just so you can have a vendor at a community lot. ☹️
@simsplayer818 Yeah, I'm on PC and have my own rules about cheats. Namely:
I don't do a lot of cheats for other things unless I'm setting up a storytelling scenario (the girlfriend's rich parents that I don't intend to play, etc.) because it's just more fun not to, but I know console players are heavily penalized for it in a way PC/Mac players aren't. ☹️
