Doing the millionaire scenario

I just completed the scenario yesterday. It took me 77 in game days. My game was set to long lifespan, and so I was able to use the same sim all the way through. I used a Sim I named Mira Persepolis who was Cheerful, Outgoing, and Romantic. I moved her into a vacant lot across the street from Summer Holiday, Travis Scott, and Liberty Lee, who became her first friends. I had never tried the acting career and thought it might be a fun thing, but apparently, for at least some players, if you aren't on your home lot when your sim goes to an audition, they automatically fail it, so for her first week or two, when Mira was sleeping on park benches, eating free chips at the bar and showering at the gym, her only sources of income were dumpster diving and gathering collectables. Once I figured out how to get her to pass her auditions, she started getting gigs and earning money from that. I bought her a tent and placed a potty bush on her home lot and her quality of life went up significantly. Mira started off with the "Friend of the World" aspiration, and the process of completing that helped her out at work. Succeeding at work helped make her famous, which allowed me to purchase a fame perk which let Mira skip auditions altogether. Acting is a pretty lucrative career compared to some, but there's a lot of downtime between gigs. I began filling the downtime with painting, and that's when the money really started rolling in. I was working on several aspirations simultaneously at this point and I was able to purchase the "Marketable" reward trait which allows you to sell crafted items for more Simoleons, and also "Creative Visionary" which increases the chances of master works. It had taken me around 60 sim days (all of spring and summer and part of fall) to amass 50,000 and become a three star celebrity. Within a few days of learning the painting skill, I had finished "Fabulously Wealthy" and earned my 5th star. At that level of fame, I purchased the "Easy Street" perk, and started making around 20,000 per gig. With that, and a payout of 1,500-19,000 per painting, it took me about two more weeks to finish the scenario.
To make a long story short, painting is an excellent way to make loads of money fast, and fame + painting makes loads more money than painting by itself.