Household receives positive bill they can't pay (wrong Math)

well dang, i was hoping there was a solution. Fingers crossed, i guess, for EA to sort it out.

Not sure if its the same bug, but I've also had a different household unable to complete cooking large meals. Small single portions go through fine, but family meals get part way through and then give the 'something in the path' error bubble. no fix has worked so far for that one either.

Hello there,

I have a stubborn bug: my family suddenly received a ridiculously small rent (43 simoleons) that I can't pay. The "pay rent" option appears, but when I click, it doesn't work. The electricity was cut off, then the water, and so I'm having trouble playing properly.

My sim is currently unable to pay her bills. She has plenty of money but when I click on pay bills nothing happens. It just says "Pay Bills + $57" but when I click it nothing happens. I have tried the mailbox, phone, computer and still no luck. Her water and electricity have been shut off. I have gone to townies households and am able to pay those bills. But when I go back to my household, I still cannot pay them. I then decided to move to a different lot with a different house, still no luck. Then I decided maybe it was my personal computer so I deleted the cache, repaired the game and then restarted the computer.  I do have MCCC installed, so I took it off as soon as I saw the issue and before repairing the game. I have no other mods. I asked around in a Facebook group and others seem to have the same issue. I cannot continue to play in a house with no power or water. In the household, it is my adult sim, dog, and cat. Please help! I do not want to give up on the save/household because she is a 4 star actress with lots of completed skills. 

This worked, you saved my household! Thank you so much.

I’m having the same issue as those above in the comments, i.e. my household can’t pay their bills. They are doing the “pay bill” interaction but nothing happens. Electricity is shut down and I don’t want to play the game if this isn’t resolved. I’m not using any mods, cc etc 

Hello! When playing with my Sims, they receive their bills, but any interaction related to paying them won't go through.  Now the power is out, and I have no way to pay the bills, regardless of whether I try on the phone, by mail, or on the computer. 

my sims bills are 64 simoleons, and the pay bills interaction doesnt work. changing the mailbox doesnt work.

October 12, 2025, and this happened to me. I cannot play this household at all anymore because the positive bill of +$148 cannot be paid. It follows the 7-Sim household wherever they go. When will there be a fix for this???

Yes!!!  I am months after this first comment.. never had this problem before... It is predetermined to break the game though.   

I had a positive balance of $31... I got the notice that if I didn't pay my power would be shut off... I tried phone, computer, mailbox, replacing the mailbox, paying from another lot, I tried taking the entire family to another lot and back again, I tried moving half the family out and then the other half, it followed one of the adult sims, the last one to leave the house actually, they didn't have power at their new house either, still couldn't pay it... I then backed the game up, from a save... I played through three more full real hours, got to the same point, power off, nothing will turn it back on and no way to pay it.   They go through the motions but it will not pay off the balance because it is positive!

EA, there needs to be a fix for this... you need to at least create a cheat code to 0 out your bills if you aren't going to fix the game! 

The saddest part... it was a house with three kids, it happens every time on Christmas morning the Landgrabb's shut off the power.  FYI, If I can figure a way around this... I am going to make it my mission to kill all the Landgrabb's!  

OMG.... I FIGURED OUT A FIX!  

It is annoying and shouldn't have to do this, EA could just make a cheat code to zero your bill out, but that would be too much work for them.   

So I followed all the suggestions, trying different ways to pay and all kinds of junk from removing the mailbox, leaving the lot with my entire family, tried playing another house for awhile... I even deleted the house, nothing worked!  

So my family consisted of two Dad's, a toddler, an infant and a baby... One of the things I tried was the splitting your family and moving them... so one Dad took the toddler, the other Dad took the infant and the baby... I moved each one to a different property... then tried moving them back together.  Well, I noticed one thing important.  The last adult to move out of the house, the positive bill followed them.

Completely annoyed with EA by this point, because if this is a known issue there should be some kind of fix that doesn't require restarting your entire game!!!!  Like I said before, could be as simple as them making a cheat code to reset the bills to $0... not asking them to recode and actually even fix the problem!  

It was Christmas morning when the Landgrabb's turned off my power... I had three kids, I wanted to do all the Christmas stuff for the kids!   BTW, EA, you owe my kids presents, by the time I figured this out it was too late, even with all the pausing I was doing trying to fix it!

FIX:

I noticed the bill followed the last adult to leave the house.  Now if you can, save your house, the way you like it (I say if you can, because like all of EA, everything is an uphill battle, it took me about 12 tries to finally get my house/lot to save, kept getting server error try later), go to the gallery, download any ugly Sim you want to, add them to your household.   Then move all your original sims using "Split from Household and Move", can even be an empty lot, leaving the ugly Sim you got from the gallery... the go back, move the ugly Sim you don't care about.... the last adult Sim in the house having the glitching bill, the bill will follow them!   Go back and get your family, move them back into their house... once again, if you have it decorated the way you want, you can just buy the lot again, bulldoze it and redownload your saved house from your gallery (if you can save it, like I said, EA fights you all the way).

You can then go into manage and delete the ugly Sim you downloaded from the gallery at this point, so you don't have some random playable Sim in your library. 

NOTE to EA:  This shouldn't be this hard to get rid of a positive $31 bill!  This was literally the only fix I could figure out... and if I wouldn't have noticed the bill followed the last adult Sim, I wouldn't have thought to do this... but it is way too many steps to fix your coding error!