Astronomically Expensive Bills

"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."