Somewhere between 3 & 4. I use the free real estate cheat (It's freerealestate on btw in case someone hasn't told you yet), when placing legacy founding households into the game, mainly because I use old households I'd saved to library which always resets their funds, but also to get them into a variety of neighborhoods & lots appropriate to family size, instead of crowding them all into starter neighborhoods. Subsequent generations, however, must buy what they can afford.
I use the needs cheat quite a bit-early in the morning, so they're not all fighting over the bathroom(s) and scrambling to get breakfast before work & school. I also cheat up the needs on stray & non-active pets that are looking pretty haggard out there, and toddlers if I'm sending other household members out on the town, or when they're exploring the jungle.
I use the aspirations cheat once they've met the necessary skill level, because I've already met most of those challenges several times over. I use the show hidden objects cheat to give them all the magic beans when they first move in because that adds 5000 simoleons to their household, but for some reason I refuse to ever use the other money cheats. I use other cheats, like reset sim, when absolutely necessary, but those are the main ones I use regularly.