Hi and welcome.
I know exactly what you mean about spending real cash on virtual donuts. I played the game for quite a while without spending any money on donuts to buy premium items but every time I went to the buildings and decorations items, I'd see all these amazing looking items that costs donuts and I thought 'That would look great in my town...' The more I played, the harder it was to resist not getting them!!
Then, along came Gil's sale and I totally caved in and bought a boat load!! :shock: :mrgreen: All the extra donuts allowed me to get some really cool premium items like Otto and the school bus and Frink and his lab, along with some cash & XP boosting items like the Springfield sign and a limo and police car etc.
The thing is, once you've bought the big premium items, you've bought them - you only have one Springfield sign and one Volcano lair etc, so while the initial outlay might have been more, you only spend the donuts once.
All I do now is buy a golden scratch card every Friday and build my donuts up that way. They cost 69p in the UK which is less than the cost of a lottery ticket and about a fifth of the price of a pint of decent beer. And when you've spent cash on premium stuff, it's always there for you to enjoy when you next log into the game (unless there's been some horrendous system error!!). You could spend almost twice as much on a lottery ticket, watch the draw, win nothing and chuck the ticket away. Bye bye £1.
Enjoy the game, have fun and play to whatever level and cost you're comfortable with. :wink: