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- Page 6
8 Sim Challenge – Day Five
Day Five of Eight Sim Challenge
CASH BALANCE: 3, 296
GOALS: MANAGE HOUSEHOLD BETTER/ UPGRADE HOUSE/ FOCUS ON BUILDING SKILLS
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It’s the start of Day Five, the cash balance is 3, 296 and the house is beginning to see a stable and steady stream of income. When you reach this point in the Challenge, you now have room to think about goals other than just making money. On Day Five, in addition to the usual goal of making the Sims earn promotions, I’ve come up with three more goals for the day.1) Because some of our Sims need skills to advance, I’ve decided to work more on gaining skill points.
MICHAEL: We’ll getz da skillz ta pay da billz!
CASSIE: Shut… up! (shoves him)
2) Second goal: update the house, since I’m getting sick of staring at bare walls.
EMMA: Tell me about it.
3) Goal 3: start looking at ways to manage the house more efficiently.
I’ll show you what I mean. Let’s start with Goal #3 first.
One of the biggest problems you will have with having an 8 Sim family is keeping them from getting in each others’ way, especially when it comes to hygiene and bladder matters. In my last 8 Sim Challenge (Eight is Enough), I dealt with the crowded house problem by giving half the household day shift jobs and half the household early morning shift jobs.
In this house, although parts of the house work different shifts, the shifts aren’t so far apart that they make a difference. So, for large parts of the day, all 8 sims are in the house.
So how have I decided to solve this situation? Easy. I’ve decided to make 2-4 Sims go to bed earlier than the rest so that the house will *gradually* wake up in waves and not all at once. This will make the *early birds* have more space to get all their needs met while their housemates sleep. Then when the *later birds* eventually wake up, they won’t have to compete with the early birds because the early birds will have their needs taken care of already.
Early Birds are good for another reason– you can have them do chores and other stuff to make life easier for everyone. Here is Justin, an Early Bird who I’ve woken up at 5AM.
JUSTIN: Why do you keep taking shots of us on the can?!
Since he has the house all to himself for about an hour before his roomies wake up, I am making him take care of his needs, clean things up a little, and cook breakfast for the others. By the time the others wake up, breakfast will already be waiting for them. And because I had him take a shower and go to the bathroom, he is one less Sim to compete with for the bathrooms when everyone else wakes up…
Beside the whole Early Bird strategy, you can better manage the house by taking stock of everybody’s work schedules and assigning tasks and “Fulfilling Needs Time” for some of them, depending on when they get home earlier before everyone else or when they have an hour or two by themselves. For example, after five days, it’s been firmly established that at their current schedules, Justin and Gerald have the house all to themselves between 8AM and 10PM. This window of time gives them the perfect opportunity to not only clean up after breakfast, but do chores and take care of their other needs.
It’s also been established that by the time Torvald gets home by 12 Noon, he has the house all to himself until 3PM. So I’ve decided that as long as his work schedule remains the same, I will use that time (12PM-3PM) to get him to tidy up a bit, take care of his hygiene and bladder motives, and make dinner before the others come home. Because of these decisions I’ve made, the house will now be less chaotic and more efficient to manage.Okay, so with that out of the way, let’s see how I’m fulfilling the other two goals I’ve made on Day Five: 1) Upgrading the house 2) Earning skill points
AFTERNOON
We have a cash balance of 3, 376 , so it’s high time to spruce things a little. I’m getting tired of looking at unfinished walls so I’ve added some wallpaper. This isn’t anything permanent, as I’m still planning to upgrade everything to something better, as soon as there is more money in the household account. In fact, as most of the Sims haven’t come home yet, I’ll probably be doing more upgrades later on in the day, depending on how much money they bring in.
Other stuff I’ve bought: I’ve added an easel because Justin and Gerald need to up their creativity skills 2 points to advance.This is about all the upgrades I’ll be doing for now. The reason why I’m stopping is that I want to be careful with bills. The more stuff you add to your house, the higher the bills will get. Worse yet, you get a bill every time you do major upgrades to the house. Since our sims aren’t really making all that much money, I’m deciding to play it safe.
BTW, do you see something very different about the furniture in the picture above? Yes– I’ve moved four of the couches from the living room into the makeshift bedroom. Can you guess why? Because in the evenings, I started having a problem with sleepy Sims versus TV watching Sims. But now that I’ve moved two more sofas to the little bedroom, up to four Sims can sleep in solitude without being disturbed by the television set.
3PM: PROMOTIONS!
Day Five is turning out to be a very, very good day financially. Both Emma and Eleanor have risen to level two in the career track of business! Not only do their salaries get upped to 180/ day, they’ve each brought in 360 in bonuses, making the cash balance skyrocket to 4, 294
EMMA/ JENNY (giving each other high fives): Grrrl power!
MICHAEL (pretending to look for some): Girls? Where???
CASSIE (sarcastically): Hardy har har! *smacks Michael across the back of the head*
MICHAEL: Ow!
As a reward for their efforts, I’m buying more upgrades for my sims– a brand new stove!
CASSIE: Oh, thank God! Another day of salad and chips and I woulda turned into a rabbit!
EMMA: Forget the rabbit part– what about constipation?!
The stove is expensive. However, it’s a good purchase in the long run, because if you notice, when you don’t have a stove, the Sims will eat constantly throughout the day, even when their hunger bars are reasonably high. This not only tends to leave messes, but it makes the food bills pile up.
The only downside to buying a stove is that the bills will rise a little. But not to worry– because items depreciate over time, the bills will eventually get smaller, provided you don’t keep buying too many things from day to day.
ELEANOR GETS A NEW JOB
I wasn’t too happy about the girls all being in business, so I’ve decided to look in the paper to get them on a different career track. Today’s job offering is that of military recruit. FAN-TASTIC! I could’ve given all of the girls this job, but I’ve given it to Eleanor, and I couldn’t be more pleased.
When doing the 8 Sim Challenge, never, ever pass up the opportunity to get at least one Sim a military job. First of all, military Sims work the early morning shift, so they will be out of many other of the Sims’ hairs and can be handy in cooking breakfast in the morning for everyone before going off to work. Secondly, the military career track is one of the highest paying careers– it starts at 250/ day. Thirdly, you won’t need friends to advance for the first couple of levels, so it’s a hassle free career track to advance in.
And here we are– at the end of Day Five of our 8 Sim Challenge– and I must say that we had a good day today. There were several promotions, a few much needed upgrades, and a Sim finding a high paying military job. Plus we were able to run the household efficiently by assigning sims different tasks depending on their work schedules.
Of course, there is still a lot more work to do in the days ahead. However, considering that we now have a steady stream of income pouring into the house and no major problems, the house is doing quite well, considering that it started off with only 240 Simoleans in the household account.
