Astronomically Expensive Bills

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.

"player2;c-16249714" wrote:
This happened to me once, I had a 3 bedroom house over two floors, but it wasn't particularly fancy. There were four people living there, and I have all lights on Auto-Light to save electricity (although I don't know if that actually has an effect on bills) and I got a bill for 12,000 Simoleons. I moved the household to another lot sharpish because they couldn't afford it by a long shot, and I've never had anything that high since.

I almost moved my sims, but I got the Frugal Reward trait shortly there after and it brought the bills down by a lot, thankfully.

"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."

Thanks for sharing. That's good information to have.