Do you use cheats?

I use resetsim quite a lot and I cheat away some money when I get my sims a pet via CAS. Once I gave my sim a plastic surgery and I cheated away 200K simoleons.

That's it. I don't really consider these as cheats.

Free real estate cheats when moving a sim into a new home, and money cheats to lower the amount of money they have.
Move object cheats when trying to place decore items, but always make sure there are not any routing issues as a result.
And the last thing I will use a cheat on is if something happened because of a game glitch, I will use a cheat to restore.

I don't know if this is considered cheating but I do unlock the career promotion lock items and open up buydebug. The only time I won't unlock the career items is if any of my sims are in that career or I'm planning on a sim to work in that field, but most of my sims are now self-employed. I even use a mod that unlocks all the career items in CAS.

I use cheats when setting up unplayed townies around different worlds: I give them skills and promote them in their careers, so the entire universe is established with a variety of characters/personalities.

In played households, I will cheat by giving free real estate if I want to start off with a wealthy family. Otherwise, I prefer not to do the money cheats because like you mentioned, it does take the fun away. I like to play and see the progression in my sims’ lives with the lifestyle they earn. If I’m lazy I will cheat and give a head start on some skills with the sims I don’t play so much. The “main” sims I play though, I will focus on them and actually tend to them and build skills properly.

As for needs, I don’t like to cheat but I will make all their bars green if necessary. (for example, if a sim is about to fall face first due to exhaustion. Nope buddy, you are getting married today.)

I don't use cheats to fill needs (but I have mod for slower decay). I have permanentely turned on all building cheats.

Free real estate, reset, and removing mood buffs.

I use them a lot for my story saves. Weather and times of day, for example.

My gameplay save is the only one I don't use cheats on, except for resets if they get stuck or whatever.

It depends on which family I’m playing. ?

I’ll motherlode a Sim I made to be wealthy or they’d end up with basic furniture! ?

I use kaching when settling in my Sims if they don’t have enough at start up for basic stuff or I need an extra room etc, and then they get a job.
Also reset Sim is used a lot!

I’ll only use reset Sim on challenges though if the Sim gets stuck and nothing works.

When I play my "rags to riches" sessions, I use the cheat to have them start off with 0 simoleons. I sometimes also use money cheats for Sims I don't intend to play, but want to live in a certain house they couldn't afford right away otherwise.

Occasionally.
I like free real estate to give my sims a nice place to start. I use money cheats to reduce their money. For example I let them pay for new clothes. And if I have a story line I want to play out I use mccc to set the number and gender of babies to the story I have in mind.

entirely depends on the circumstances in my case. most of the time i don't have a reason to cheat even though i have the ability to use them quickly.

when building new households i'll cheat some traits, a little money and then keep the household ready to be used again in order to create the correctly. at least when i do start a brand new save that household in effect wasn't cheated into the new save.

sometimes i want to create a new save and dump a pile of sims in i'll want to use "freerealestate on" from the console and set up correct relationships from MCCC.