What are all the possible ways that a Sim can earn money? Let us count the ways.

Base-Game
- enter a career track and work up the career ladder
- make and sell paintings
- write novels and receive royalties from the novels
- collect money from money trees
- move out a Sim, settle the Sim somewhere, and move the Sim back in
- make candies with the culinary career reward
- make medicines with that science career reward
- tend plants in the slacker career reward
- marry/move-in a playable Sim (preferably someone who is loaded) or a Townie

I don't remember which EP it came from but there is a pinball machine you can make money on.

Also the counterfeit machine.

Does a mod that raises the appreciation rate of crafted items count? I have one but really haven't put it to the test.

The Law career reward pays while practicing speeches and the Gamer career reward pays while playing pinball - anybody playing pinball, so you can have actual rent parties and make rent! You can sell fruits and vegetables when you harvest them and fish at any time you take them out of inventory. You can also sell boots and date rewards. The roses net $55.

If you don't download the fix for it, you can make a profit off of moving into an apartment and moving right back out after furnishing it.

You can perform music or freestyle for tips, hire yourself out to work as a DJ or barista, dig for treasure, own a business, work in somebody else's business, employ your pets.

On campus, you can work in the cafeteria or tutor dormies.

You can discover new astronomical objects while using the telescope and win cash prizes for the feat.

Certain chance cards involve cash rewards, including choiceless ones for school.

The pinball machine that makes you money is part of the Gamer career track, so whatever EP that was.

-Dig for items and sell the results
-Buy a dreamcatcher, hang it on the wall overnight, and sell it the next morning (over $1,000 profit!)

Manage a retirement home.

A few years back I built a retirement home with a a combination of Single and double bed-sitting room ( simply furnished bed, dresser, easy chair ), a common area with book shelves, piano, comfy sofas and easy chairs, poker table, chess table, art easel and an aquarium. There is also a large kitchen -dining room and a nicely landscaped garden with fishing pond, lounge chairs, benches and a swimming pool. There is also an exersize room and a crafts room ( florist bench, pottery wheel). Oh..and his and her bath-shower rooms!

I still use this by moving in an adult Sim who earns money as a retirement - care home manager. Each time a new elder resident moves in he or she bring in a tidy lump sum of $. On top of this some residents will turn over thier retirement checks and/or part time job earnings. And then the manager, depending on how well he treats residents and how well he or she gets to know them may also become a death insurance beneficiary.

It helps to grant the manager's wishes to be able to purchase and use the Elixer of Life.

My current manager is expected to take the residents on group outings and vacations.
(It helps to hire a maid,)

Besides moving in townie or nieghborhood elders these can be created in CAS.

The manager may of course quit the business at any time and can earm $ buy other means as well including working on a career.

The retirement home is a stroke of genius! Can't wait to try this myself!

Lots of decorative items actually increase in value the longer you have them... mostly paintings, in my experience, but lots of my blue-blooded, old-money legacy families are able to use the appreciation of various family heirlooms to cover all their expenses. Not really viable for a Sim just starting out, but for the rich who want to stay rich or get richer, it's a good, realistic option.

Fortune sims can spin money out of nothing in two ways, by giving financial consulting at a computer or through investment. My plans for my hood include a functional bank- a residential lot populated with fortune sims. Families all over the hood will deposit their money, increasing the size of the pot the bankers have to invest (the more fortune sims, the higher than chance of income) and receiving interest in turn based on the percentage of the pot made up by their savings. The bank's reserve could also be used for loans or mortgages or to finance municipal projects. It would go a long way to giving the hood a real economic system.

A later EP or patch took away the Dream catcher money reward.

Work as a DJ or bar tender
Salvage in the trash for messy sims
Find items in the sand on a beach
Inheritance money on a family members death if not modded out.

Moving a sim out and back would lose money for those of us with the no 20K handout.

Noone mentioned the crafting stations; flowers, toys, robots, pottery etc. Even if you don't sell them in a business they're worth more than you paid to make them.

I thought crafting had already been said? Which is why I didn't mention it.

Has networking been mentioned? I love it when some really poor sims are given a TV. Realistic? -not really, but I take it as if they had won a lottery.

Your sims also occasionally come back from hikes with a decorative item in their inventory that can be sold. I love those for my prehistoric sims, I treat the extra cash as representing the advantage of ranging further from home and exploring.

I also have visitor controllers banning non-locals on all my lots, to reflect the fact that the tribes haven't discovered each other yet, but I allow them to make contact through hiking (since you sometimes randomly meet a sim from another subhood).

Not mentioned as far as I could see.

One of my sims got one of those huge dance spheres as a date reward. That was more ... am I really sure I want to keep dating this person. Wtf did they think I was going to do with this? XD

And students may get some money from their relatives if their grades are good. (You get one of those messages saying that, no need to really have any relatives in the hood.)
They also may get some money if they have high skills in something (a message also pops-up saying how good they did in sports, music, whatever.)


And repairing the junk car. You can sell it later for more than you paid.



For that purpose I like using §10k Treasury Consol Certificates, they are a good investment and look like it!

You are the very person I have been searching these boards for! I read about this idea of yours on another thread and then could not find it again. The idea was so intriguing I immediately set it up in my MegaHood. I created a family of four brothers and a sister (The Bain Family) and moved them into Belladonna Cove. They are all Fortune/Knowledge and take shifts in the computer room doing their Financial Consulting business.

Lots of families have invested as much as 50% of their net worth with Bain Investments, LTD. The Bains are now fiduciary agents for about $700,000 Simoleans.

Yesterday the Bains received their first dividend: $21,365 to be divided among the 30 investors according to a percentage based on the investor's stake in the total. For example, Cyd Roseland invested $5000 and will receive 0.8% of all dividends and interest. Bella penned a check for $100,000 and therefore will be earning a 15.7% return guaranteed.

No one in Bluewater Village, Desiderata Valley or Riverblossom Hills succumbed to the Bain blandishments as their economies are not the rentier type; eg: entrepreneur-based, craft-based and agriculture-based.

While the dividends do not arrive every day, the additional income will be necessary for some and icing on the cake for others. And for me its a lot of fun.

umm... gardening and fishing? You won't believe how much money can be made by fishing! Mouthwatering produce get sold at a good price too. I actually use the mods that reduce the value for fish and produce, otherwise it's unrealistic how much Sims gain from selling it.

One of my sims buy and sell businesses. Last time I played him he sold and bought the Mcdonalds 3 times earning him almost 100 000 . His real estate business is ranked a 10 so he can have a high prize on everyting. Funny thing is it was the same townie buying it every time. Must really like those BigMacs....

I do not understand..only times my sim sold his business, it happend using the phone, sell owned lot.
How do you sell TO a sim?

You place the deed on a wall and set for sale, which is how you run a real estate office. If a townie buys it I know it goes back to being unowned, not sure if a playable buys it as I've never done it.

Oh! How easy...I've heard about people running Real Estates, but never "clicked" or even wondered, how it worked. lol

Has tutoring dormies been said? If your uni sim clicks on some other sims asignment you can tutor them for money.

I'm thrilled to hear you tried this idea out and it worked! Now I'll definitely put it to good use in Heimlichbourg, and I'll be sure to let you know if I stumble on any other banking-related options.

I've done this:
That pinball machine that was mentioned earlier? Get a pixel with lots of a aspiration points (the pinball costs 10,000 points) and give them about 10 machines-put them into inventory.
Then create an arcade building, have them buy it and install all of machines into it.
Open for business, and you'll make money hand over fist, guaranteed.
If they tire of the business, you can have them sell it and save the package as a ownable lot, ready for the next owner.

The tips about a financial consulting business and the real estate office were very helpful, and I didn't quite know how to set them up. Thanks for that!

It works just fine, one can sell empty lots or improved lots and the Estate Agent gets a small profit, for example a basic tiny lot worth $900 sells for about $1050. Just send your playable to the Office and click on the deed, it will ask you if you want to purchase it.