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."

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

"3KNPen;c-16249371" wrote:
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.

I do. I never thought that would make a difference. They do live in a mansion, and I expect bills to be high; I've just never seen them that high. I usually get the frugal reward trait pretty early on, and that has decreased the bills by a considerable amount.

"LiaRose1435;c-16249399" wrote:
One of my households has bills that are about 45,000 simoleons. They live in a mansion though so it makes sense.

They do live in a mansion, and that must be what caused the bills to be so high. Usually by the time my sims get to that point they've got the frugal trait, which this family didn't have. I've never seen what it actually costs to have a house of that size and with nice furnishings without the frugal reward trait before. That's intense. I do like the way TS4 has quelled the getting rich too easy aspect of TS3. I had to put in effort just to keep certain families from all becoming millionaires in that game.

The size of the house also gets put into the mix. I refuse to live in cramped quarters, myself. I like being able to move the camera and see what's going on and not have to worry because the house walls are such, that even on walls partially down (or however it's worded) the view is blocked.

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.

"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.