When Do You Decide To Age Your Sims to the Elder Lifestage?

Keep getting the "Potion of Youth" from the satisfaction reward store to keep them from aging up to 'death'.
I wish this could be done in real life, heh heh!

I'm somewhere between. I play rotationally, so most of all it depends on the sim and if they're still part of my core rotation. I've also switched between playing normal and long lifespans. On normal I would usually play until the end of the life stage, but on long it could be when I'm ready. Again depends on the sim too.

I play on Long and that allows for several days for each life stage. Also, with HSY they totally revamped the numbers. I think they may also do so in GT, but don't quote me. At any rate, I allow my Sims to live out their current life stage and they age up, naturally. With Elders, I'm not playing a specified Legacy, so it isn't necessary for my Adults to become Elders sooner than they might. Most will decease quickly, since they aren't overly athletic and I don't play a traditional rotation. The other families are pretty much on their own. That's what so cool about grandparents coming for a 'stay' when a Baby is born. This should be interesting.

I play it through to the end---I want it to emulate real life, with natural aging progression

My aging on saves, when it happens, it happens. My aging off saves, when they've done everything they need to do as an Adult.

I age sims up when I feel like it. I play exclusively with aging off, but I have turned it on once or twice very briefly. I've never been big on family gameplay up to this point. I have one save right now where families will eventually become part of the story but I still plan to control when the kids age up. I am looking forward to the infant update and the new pack even if it ends up only being used for that one save.

I play with aging off, so literally everything is "when I am ready to."

That being said, in all these years of the game, I have never aged up any sims to Elder... no, wait, that's not quite true. I aged up Geoffrey Landgraab to an Elder while Nancy is still an adult. Even though it's canon, or at least semi-canon, that they are the same age, I wanted her to seem a bit more like a gold-digger. Or, at least like she likes having her doting and naive older husband wrapped around her finger while she does whatever she wants.

But I digress. Most of my adults will eventually be aged up to Elder when their kids start families of their own.

The one exception is that I started a few households for Cottage Living where the eventual goal is to have them be elders in the same timeline as my other sims, but I wanted them to raise their kids rather than just creating the children in CAS. So I'm playing those households* sort of on a separate timeline, mostly just interacting with each other. I've set that aside for a while, but the goal is to have them play through a couple of generations, starting as young adults, and then reintegrate them into my main timeline. It's basically a save within a save.

*Most of them are within my Crumplebottom-Goth family tree. I created a bunch of Crumplebottom siblings, and then added Cornelia (Crumplebottom) Goth to Mortimer and Bella's household, and set her as Mortimer's mom. (She's already an elder, so that she can fit into that household's timeline.) Cornelia also has a brother and sister (Rupert and Amelia). I wanted to make Agnes their sister as well, but I've never been able to figure out a way to add her or cousin Agatha to the family without affecting her NPC status or messing up the stall. Anyway, Rupert and his wife Winifred are currently newly married YAs, and they are going to raise twin daughters (Pandora and Primrose), who will eventually both get married and each have one child of their own. Sadly, a tragic cowshed fire will eventually take the lives of all adults (parents and grandparents) in Rupert's branch of the family, leaving young Tom and Daisy (Rupert and Winifred's grandchildren) to be raised by their dear old great-aunt Amelia. (Amelia is currently living her best life as a single adult and headmistress of Copperdale Prep (a snooty residential facility for wealthy fail sons and fail daughters).

I play with aging off and so far I’ve never aged up a sim past young adult.

Probably if I'm on the fourth generation so I won't have great grandma as an adult.

Honestly I feel like it takes me forever to age my sims especially from young adult

probably because I play so many households and I am just trying to get all my families started ?


I'm also trying to match older premades on same timeline so I can't get all into aging one household to the end ?

I am however getting close to aging Mortimer elder which I am quite excited about