All Saves Seem to Be Corrupt

Product: The Sims 4
Platform: Mac
Which language are you playing the game in? English
How often does the bug occur? Only after opening any save
What is your current game version number? Unable to find it since the GameVersion.txt file does not show anything, but game has been reinstalled and recently repaired as on 1/4/25
What expansions, game packs, and stuff packs do you have installed? Everything is installed as of 1/4/25
Steps: How can we find the bug ourselves? Not quite sure.
What happens when the bug occurs? The bug occurs after the first save of a new game. After a fresh reinstall, repair, and resetting The Sims 4 folder in Documents, I am able to play one save and switch between households in this save, but when I want to return to Main Menu to create another save, the game does not respond and freezes. When I reopen The Sims 4, it remains on loading screen and never loads to the Main Menu. Music still plays, tips still change, and the plumbob is spinning. This will continue for max of 30 minutes, but that is when I lose my patience and force-quit the program.

Things that I have attempted but have not worked:

• checking system requirements (I'm on 2022 MacBook Pro running Sequoia 15.2, Apple M2, 8 GB memory, and have about 81 GB of storage available and use the cloud. I also have the game installed on an external 5TB hard drive.)
• clearing cache 
• regenerating the Sims 4 folder by removing the folder from Documents (I'm not married to any of my saves since I deleted them out of frustration)
  • Game is able to load when I remove the The Sims 4 folder, but when I did the trial-and-error of adding files slowly back in, it appears the saves are always corrupt... which makes me think the saving process is faulty.
  • All versions of the saves did not work. For example, if I removed the extension (.ver0) to just have it as Slot00000002.save, they still didn't work.
• repairing the files via the EA App
• playing in offline mode
• no antivirus programs blocking EA or The Sims 4, both are program exceptions
• fresh reinstall of The Sims 4 3x
• reinstalling the EA App
• all drivers are up-to-date

What do you expect to see? Being able to play the game and save it. Being able to make multiple saves. Right now, the only way I can play is removing "The Sims 4" folder and regenerating but never being able to save or play a save... which kind-of defeats the purpose of actually playing if the only way I can play is a new game.
Have you installed any customization with the game, e.g. Custom Content or Mods? Never used
Did this issue appear after a specific patch or change you made to your system? There was some time that I did not play The Sims 4. Had no issues with when Lovestruck was installed, but this appears to have happened since I updated my OS to Sequoia and added Life and Death. Prior to this, I was able to switch between saves and loading screen time took 5 minutes max.

Please help a homie in need. I haven't been able to really play this game for 2 months and I really miss it.