Sims2: The Taylor Clan

Clarissa and her twin sister Clarice were the oldest of the seven children of Tennessee Taylor, a legendary figure in Strangetown, famous for adopting children and then getting them taking back away again.  Clarissa is raising four teens alone, after the death of her partner Gino Louie. The kids all have lots of friends that they like to bring home from school, so her house is generally full of life and chaos, which is comfortably similar to her own upbringing.  She has learned to make big meals of spaghetti or mac'n'cheese in the evening to fill them up.  Their "Don't Wake the Llama" game is the favourite of everyone in the neighbourhood.

Her tiny two-bedroom row house is rented.  The kids sleep in shifts, but since the two eldest have after-school jobs, it actually works out pretty well.  It's fortunate that they have a nice big yard, since they generally eat out there rather than inside, unless it's very cold.  The neighbours all treat the front yards as communal property, so it's a friendly place.

Clarissa's job as a home video editor doesn't bring in much money, but she has managed to scrimp and save 46,000 Simoleons.  She's wondering if the younger two would like to run a business, and if so, what kind.  She doesn't want to lay out all her money an investment right before the oldest, Clifford, is ready to move out and could use some money to get set up.  Her dream is for her kids to own instead of rent, and have enough beds for all their children!

This is a plasticbox row of attached townhouses, which I modified to be apartments.  I missed a few things so it doesn't work that well, but it has been fine for this family. 

In the current round of challenge, any family that has a member that has a want that is not career-related, or career-related for a career that is not available to them, invokes the buying of a community lot.  This works nicely because each community lot I bring into the neighbourhood earns me points in my challenge. I also have a lot of community lots available, between the ones from plasticbox, and from the three shopping districts I've added.  Through the last round I was making them buy the most expensive one they could afford, but that made things unnecessarily difficult.  Now I roll a number from 1 to however many thousands they have, and pick the community lot closest to that number.  This family has about 46,000 Simoleons, so I rolled a number from 1 to 46, and got 13.  So they bought a playground for about 6,600 Simoleons and installed a ticket machine.  Almost all community lots can be run this way if there's nothing else obvious to do with it, and the real benefit is that only one Sim is needed to run the lot - they just stand around by the ticket machine "selling" all day, until their needs get too low and I send them home.