I also use the Testing cheats whenever I need them to reset a sim or to move a household that I am not playing or if I am not doing rags-to-riches. I edit sims in CAS whenever I want and I don't really think of that as cheating, more like editing during gameplay. I have used cheats for concepts that I add to the game. For example, I set up this private boarding school and then I gave it an endowment with money cheats. That is realistic but uses cheats to set it up. The attendees pay school fees except that there are scholarships. I have no problem with something like adding my own scholarships on top of the ones already in the game. That is just an example of how I use cheats.
If I do give them more money, it is more like Kaching than Motherlode for most houses. I have used Kaching if I think an excessive amount of objects have broken in the house which is like an insurance payout. The cheats are there to set up the game how you want.