Astronomically Expensive Bills

Are the household members' inventories full? Items in their personal inventory and family inventory are added into their bills.

"Andiratyme;c-16249142" wrote:
Are the household members' inventories full? Items in their personal inventory and family inventory are added into their bills.

I did not know this. They are not full, but that's good information to know. Thanks.

One of the first reward traits I give mine is frugal, which reduces the bills. They're still high, but not as much. Also set all the lights on auto-lights, so they automatically turn off when a sim leaves the room. That helps.

Do you have any Masterpieces used in your decoration? Those will definitely add to your bills very quickly. The Frugal trait mentioned above does stack if you have more than one Sim who has it and along with the auto lights make sure you shut off any radios when a Sim is not using them.

One of my households has bills that are about 45,000 simoleons. They live in a mansion though so it makes sense.

My current game the bills are 8,500 but the older mum is lvl 10 scientist and clears over 3k per work day pluss has a couple books in literary digest then her younger wife is just starting out as a young adult and is a writer. Bills jumped when the twins were born and they decided to buy and renovate the old salt house. Still they are very manageable but I have to empty my scientist pockets quite often since she gets tons of harvestables. (This new year / new legacy I'm making myself play ways I haven't before and use aspects of the game I've ignored like the city)

Using auto-lights and turning off radios/tvs has no effect on bills. Bills are calculated from the objects/furnishings that your sim owns.

Bill calculation may have been tweaked since (as the following is from 2014,) but here's an explanation of how it works:

SimGuruHolms wrote:

"We intentionally made bills higher than past games in order to give more of a pushback. There was a lot of sentiment that Sims 3 was too easy, so one of the ways we opted to make 4 more challenging was to up bills. The bill calculation is actually a little more advanced in 4 as well. We actually calculate bills kind of like tax brackets. The first 20k worth of stuff in your house is billed at a %, then the next 10k a higher percent, then the next 20 an even higher percent, and so on and so forth. This allows us to have bills be pretty light at the beginning of the game when you have very little income, but ramp up much faster as you build a bigger house because your income should also be significantly higher."

"IceyJ;c-16249862" wrote:
Using auto-lights and turning off radios/tvs has no effect on bills. Bills are calculated from the objects/furnishings that your sim owns.

Bill calculation may have been tweaked since (as the following is from 2014,) but here's an explanation of how it works:

SimGuruHolms wrote:

"We intentionally made bills higher than past games in order to give more of a pushback. There was a lot of sentiment that Sims 3 was too easy, so one of the ways we opted to make 4 more challenging was to up bills. The bill calculation is actually a little more advanced in 4 as well. We actually calculate bills kind of like tax brackets. The first 20k worth of stuff in your house is billed at a %, then the next 10k a higher percent, then the next 20 an even higher percent, and so on and so forth. This allows us to have bills be pretty light at the beginning of the game when you have very little income, but ramp up much faster as you build a bigger house because your income should also be significantly higher."

Glad they did this! Sims 3 was incredibly easy when it came to making money and paying. I like some challenge in my game.

I've always found this absolutely ludicrous--that the things I own, which I have already paid for, figure into my sim's weekly bills.

"So_Money;c-16250518" wrote:
I've always found this absolutely ludicrous--that the things I own, which I have already paid for, figure into my sim's weekly bills.

I view the bill system as a combination of things. It's paying for your Utilities, the Free Services (health care, the free day care, free meals ect) and also a property/income tax which is where paying for the stuff on your lot/in your inventory comes in. You could also add in a School Tax as well for the public schooling system.