I'm a bit different I guess. I give my sims a boost to get things beyond the grind. It was fun and interesting, and enjoyable when I was learning the game at first. But doing that and having to focus on one household at a time to do the "lather, rinse, repeat" over and over and over for every household or sim, no thank you. Then go to another household, they are all dead or skill-less...
I prefer focusing on building, role-playing, jobs, careers. Skills. Why I have long life on now. It's like 20 days pregnancy now? So if I focus on one household for awhile, it's not total chaos of un-skilled when I check other ones. I do get members of a household for my main sims to be productive.
For the rich/poor, there is an in-between. I rarely use the money cheat anymore. When splitting households, the money gets split too, depending on the story that I am "God" of lol.
If a brand new household, I may give the money cheat to allow me to modify it enough before playing it. Like what I'm doing with the "Orphanage" I'm working on in Sulani. They had like 17,000 simoleons, impossible to work on the lot with that unless I boot the characters and have an open lot, so I gave +200,000.
Once I'm satisfied with a lot and the characters, I lay off on cheats. What's there and in the household is what is there now. Get skills and a way to earn income.
For example, the Ebabits, I modified from Landgraabs, had 3 mil starting. They are down to like 700,000 and dropping now, so they better get something on the go. I spent a whole day working on that. Now that I have the dancing and singing stuff from one or two of the packs, since they are uneducated, it's gotta be the entertainment jobs and careers.
People who want to spend 10 generations of grinding to get things on the go, hey, if that's what you like, cool. Not for me in a Sim game though. :)
I hope that's helpful. This is my opinion. The way I play will most likely change and evolve if I keep playing. ;)
