Is it too easy to get rich in TS4?

Totally! I love playing regular households, regular stories of regular people. When I have my heirs move out they always start out poor and have to work their way up. Now let me be completely honest - I have no idea what actually determines that, but my sims always end up with waaay too much money than they need way too early on. And the game doesn't offer enough luxury items to spend that money on.

I take my time with gameplay. I don't have painting slaves in my households. Heck, I don't even take advantage of emotional auras because to me that's cheating and somehow my sims still fly through their jobs and get promotions with me not even trying all that much. Why is that?

There is some challenge at the very beginning but it's short lived. Before I know it my sims have 50k to their name and it's just sitting there because bills only come once a week.

I almost exclusively play legacies and since the parents money carries over to the kids a lot of times I have trouble making that aspect of the game a challenge (especially with painter or writer sims). Usually I combat this by having my heir start with little to nothing when they move into their new home unless the story calls for something else.

"Lizzychicago;c-16615225" wrote:
I always use cheats. I'm poor enough, don't wanna play poor sims.

Basically this. I give them money for a nice house, with some extra to expand, and everything they would need. I don't particularly enjoy going to community lots for skills. My sims are pretty home bound, especially when they get married, have kids, have friends moving in. I'm quite controlling, and like to know that every sim is doing something productive. So I need to be able to level "every" skill at home.

Anyway, I think the most money I've had in a single household was like 6-700k. I think I took away half or so, but they quickly got it back (two sims with Shrewd trait). I'll also "transfer" money to a young sim moving out of their parents house, and getting their own.

ALSO, painting is insane for money. I think I've seen large masterpieces going for 10-12k. Its crazy. I don't sell paintings that often, though, only when the sims have whims to do so. I often (always) have huge basements with collections in them, and will only sell duplicates.

Haven't made much money from fishing or gardening. I tend to keep most harvested plants (for cooking and what have you), and fish is turned into plasma packs as I usually play vampires.

It's what you make it for me. I often chose to go the money making fast route because it's fun and it gives me a sense of achievement. I'm pretty sure the game makers know this. If I chose the day to day live my sims normally type of game play it's actually pretty hard to make money without it becoming a grind, it has my motherlode finger get quite itchy in fact to even attempt to play that way for any length of time.
So instead I get my quick achievement set up fix and can congratulate myself for being the queen of the universe once again when the money starts to roll in.

It can be, it depends on what I'm doing. I find myself having to make a real effort not to get rich too soon. A lot of times I find it a struggle in the beginning and then I have to change things around to stop the money rolling in. Even my homeless sim was making bank within a few weeks but he's a klepto.

yes, my writer got rich as hell, my Vampires got rich as hell... I always have to cheat some Simoleons away cause I don't know what to do with all that money :D.

Promotions in jobs seem to come in no time and there are objects to help "recycle" money such as the one trash bin where you get money back for throwing out items. There's also the money tree reward I recently learned about, which you can make money very easily with. I have kept myself from using these since I prefer the game to be more realistic and personally I don't like spending much money on a big house since the amount of room intimidates me a bit.