gosh guys, you really dislike paying your bills =))

the only 'tricks' I know off are placing the burglar alarm outside (on a wall beside the front door) and using fresh produce and caught fish for private school shmooze points OTL

Private School Scenario
The easiest way to ace this is to greet the headmaster with as many special greetings as possible. High Five, kiss kiss darling-those greets. Do not do a normal greet or those special ones will disappear. These gestures/special greets are worth a ton of schmooze points.
You should not need more than a tidy house and some unburned spaghetti to get in, but if you are short serve coffee worth another 10 points. Another option is to buy one high enviroment deco object and move it about the house for extra tour points.

Toddler Skills
Need these to happen quickly? make sure the parents are platinum (a date while the toddler is still a baby is the easiest) buy smart milk and a thinking cap, serve the toddler milk and have the parent teaching the skill wear a thinking cap to make training much faster.
When potty training cancel potty train toddler on the parents queue after that have patted the toddler on the head and they can go do other things instead of stand in front of the toddler waiting.

Grumpy customers at the till
If your cashier is slow and a line if forming have another controllable sim go to those at the back of the queue and tell them a joke, they will forget all about being grumpy or even that they are waiting. Once the joke is over they will either go back to waiting or may go buy something else.

Pregnancy
For easier pregnancy care use bubble baths for comfort and hygiene, sparkling pre-made meals will be more filling and buy a bed with as high as energy rating as you can afford.

After school Fun
For kids with drained fun who need a quick pick me up send them to garden (pulling weeds or watering) do a round of red hands or go on a pool slide.

Gardening
Gardens grow better if they are fertilized, compost is free fertilizer. All manner of items can be composted, plates (remove all sinks) nappies/diapers, rubbish, newspapers. If the bin gets kicked over grab it as compost and leave it over. Gardens give fun, help build a badge and provide food and money.

Adopting Pets
make sure to line up actions from various areas, so something from love then something from play. EG stroke, play razzle, give treat, play fetch, rub belly on a dog. Do not wait on them to run there course but cancel them soon after they begin. This will rapidly fill the pets relationship meter towards your sim often allowing for an adoption in one session.

Cheap Fun
For really poor sims buy them a garden flamingo they will have fun kicking it.

Hungry-Sleepy Loop
If your Sim keeps passing out in their food, have them get an instant meal. They can't fall asleep when eating one of those. (Alternatively, you can use a pizza slice or a drink from the juicer if either of them are available.)

Any food that they have to stand up for as well, so if there is no seating they will stand and eat.

Floor Dividers
For whatever reason, using a floor divider to seperate a room makes the Sims consider it a separate room entirely. Stereo in the bedroom keep waking your Sims? Floor divider. Sims have to share a single bathroom and keep shooing each other? Floor divider. Alas, this doesn't work in apartments. Rosebine used to have a nice invisible floor divider but it's gone now or I'd link it.

Bathroom Arches
If you want something a bit classier than a floor divider, dividing up the bathroom with a wall and an arch also helps. Put the shower/bathtub on one side of the wall and the toilet and sink on the other.

Apartment Noise
If you stick a bunch of paintings or furniture against any shared walls in an apartment, the neighbours' noise can't come through and bother your Sims. (Or you could just put a gap between the apartments when building in the first place.)

If I had known about this a few years ago, I wouldn't have had to pull all the televisions out of all my BV hotels.

Quick Fun
If you need to raise fun quickly (to do homework, etc.), musical instruments, video games and pinball are all effective. Poorer sims can kick the flamingo, as joandsarah pointed out above. The lawn gnome and Seasons chicken sculpture can also be kicked this way.

Or, if you don't mind a bit of cheating, you could get Pescado's "Kick the Cheat". It's cloned from the lawn gnome - sims have to be able to stand behind it to kick it. As an added bonus, the cheat doesn't fall over - no wasted time standing the thing back up before your sim can kick it again. If you use Macrotastics, it will look for this object if it needs to raise the sim's fun level. (You might want to watch your volume - this thing yells when you kick it. )

Available here in kickthecheat.zip
http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/f...al%2Fobjects%2F

I often go to build mode and turn the chairs to an angle where they force to hold food and thus not fall literally asleep, lol

Keeping University dorm cafeteria tables and chairs from getting stuck in use

Put centerpieces at all the place settings to prevent students from doing class assignments on the dining tables. You can put desks or tables in some other room for them to do class work.

http://www.modthesims.info/showthre...004#post5113004

Also, didn't you once said you put a foundation in the bathroom to split the tub and toilet? That was a nifty interior design trick, as you claimed it was privacy-friendly because sims didn't mind seeing naked each other

Half-step foundations, actually:
http://modthesims.info/showthread.p...564#post5262564

Faster HCDU Loading
Before running the Hack Conflict Detection Utility, make a temporary folder and move anything that you're sure won't cause a conflict (clothing/hair meshes, recolours, etc) into it. HCDU will be much quicker to load. Don't forget to put everything back before loading the game.

Flowers
If you use moveobjects and quartertile placement together, you can overlap flowers together. Sometimes it looks really nice.

There are three main ways to move the camera. I assume everyone here knows about the onscreen commands and keyboard shortcuts (since those were linked earlier), but my favorite seems to be a bit less obvious: between the right mouse button and scroll wheel, you have excellent control of the camera. Right click and drag to move, the further you move the cursor the faster you go. Scroll to zoom, and click the scroll wheel down to rotate and tilt. Some of that can't be done with either the keyboard or onscreen buttons, and it's especially convenient if you (like me) prefer to play one-handed and not touch the keyboard.

If you use the slidey cheat (snapobjectstogrid false), you can do that much more freely. Makes for natural looking planting. Makes for horrid gardening though so I'd advise using stuff that doesn't need attention (or too much stuff that doesn't need attatention) or the perfect plants mod.

That's a thing nikkamagizia? - that's how I've controlled the camera from the start. I thought I got it from the tutorial lot.

@maxon - I've since forgotten where I got them, but I have some plastic and no-care flowers - the latter has butterflies and things. It's pretty useful.

EDIT: They were made by a "Chrissy6930" but I can only find that name on TSR.

I wonder what's going on with all these deleted "go away" posts.

Random trolling simmer worshiping and meme-fying a premade maxis sim from TS3.

Oof. In five years, they're going to look back at that with embarrassment.

If you have adopted a pet that does not want to eat pet food, teach him the "Come here" command. You can then fill his food bowl and call him to eat.

Pet Food Problems

If they still won't eat pet food after training them to "come here," they might be completely trained to eat human food instead. Drop a dish of human food on the floor. When the pet starts to eat it, have a Sim scold them. They should be able to eat from a pet bowl after that.

As well, make sure that the pet bowls aren't facing the wall. Sims like to turn them around when refilling them. Even so, occasionally a pet bowl will glitch and need to be replaced.

Two mods, the Dog Chew Treat and Kitty Fish Treat, are also good to have on hand.

I have always solved it with just teaching them the Come Here command - until they learn it, a dish of cereal on the floor and flowerbeds keep them alive

Easier even - don't put the pet bowl against a wall if you don't have to in the first place. (I like to place a fence around a small area at the back kitchen door - the pets from the street can't eat the food at night then).

Lockable arches. Not sure if that's vanilla or a locking mod is required, but in my game at least, it's possible to lock arches if an open-plan room is getting a bit too... ...open-plan.

Private School--Turn the Lights ON before the tour.

Bills--Solar panels/windmills. Usually solar panels, easier on my computer and I can stick them on the roof.

Pets--if the pet has poor indoor manners--pees on the floor or chews/scratches furniture, then I keep them locked outside until they've learned to behave. I always build a fenced run for the Critturs, they have so much to learn before they can have the run of the place.

Pets: what Sunbee said; and that's the reason why I like houses on a foundation for puppies - they CAN'T pee in the house, but you still need to catch them in the act and praise. ALSO like toddlers on foundations, so I can put the pet food outside - I hate when they eat pet food (although my RL life son liked dog biscuits as a kid).
I only found out about "great divide" fences a while ago, now I love them! Building a 2-square shower makes it work like at university. Crib in room with noise lets the baby sleep (did you know the dishwasher will wake them?)
ONE person can handle twins, if they don't work and only sleep when the baby/toddler sleeps (gee, just like RL!). Even then, may sometimes need a nanny to have a break (clean, bath, socialize). With 6 babies/toddlers you need 3 people - it CAN be done, but needs total management, with lots of stopping, looking at everyone's needs, and planning. It IS a lot harder for a single person who wants $ or romance (serves them right!) or is supper clean (they complain when you stop them cleaning to tend to the child.)
And Sims are a not-living example of why 2 parents are best, even if one works, there is someone there they can interact with and be happier.

Feeding Pets

In an emergency, if your pet is extremely hungry and won't eat for whatever reason, Give Love > Feed Treat. Those pet treats are surprisingly filling. Just one will fill a pet's hunger bar nearly halfway.

Also for hungry pets and if you are using community lot time; in an emergency (pet bowl runs out before you sims come back home) place down flower beds and they will eat those.

Or use clean and fill all pet dishes on the Simblender.