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.