Story

When Jane Doe and John Smith got married everything seemed perfect, they had the big house, fancy cars, massive gardens and were up to their ears in cash. When Jane became pregnant with their first child it seemed that nothing could go wrong for these two. Unfortunately, things soured quickly after Jane announced her pregnancy, John was accused of stealing from the companies budget. He was fired and promptly taken to court, the proceedings turned out to be incredibly expensive and quickly ate away at their funds. Eventually John was found innocent, but by then Jane was heavily pregnant and they had nothing left. With no other company willing to hire him, John was forced to sell their beautiful estate home and to move to a small and dingy 2 bedroom house. Despite all of this John still struggled to pay off the remainder of the court fees and to put food on their table. When Jane went into labour and gave him a little girl, he considered putting their beautiful daughter up for adoption. However when he brought up the subject with Jane she refused to even think about giving up their daughter, even if it meant a better life for her.

Rules

- Neither Jane or John can work
- When the daughter becomes a teen she must get a part time job.
- No pets (You're poor remember)
- Cheapest furniture
- Family funds must be dropped to a $300 or lower after furnishing using the familyfunds cheat. (Spend it wisely)
- You must pay back the rest of the court fees, either through donations or familyfunds. It can be any price you want, but the higher the better.

Scoring

(+20) For each successful Birthday Party
(+30) For each child that recieves an A+ (If you decide to have for than one)
(+10) For each extra child.
(+40) For each extra child successfully raised to YA
(-70) For any deaths in the family
(-15) Repoman!
(-15) For each child that gets an F

Aim!

- Have the daughter and any other children grow up well despite living in poverty.

Optional: Your daughter has to have the most expensive furniture in her bedroom
Optional: Buy an additional lot and build your daughter a estate to move into when she becomes an adult. (While donating the maximum amount of money everyday)

Any critique is welcome. As this is my first real attempt at creating a challenge, so any suggestions for points and/or rules would be helpful.

I'm going to try this soon, I've got too many other ones. But this is a defiant one.

Any Questions?

So, can the parents do other things for money such as paint, play guitar, write, etc?

They won't be poor for long.
Starting with a furnished house, up to 1000 simoleons and then allowed to earn freely, as long as it isn't via careers. Luxury! Multiple bedrooms! Maybe they should start in a caravan/trailer, or with no money at all. Or both.

Should the family be created as Mum/Dad/toddler? There's no way to get an infant in CAS, I think.

I created a toddler in CAS and added some requirements:

-One parent may work a hobby for money only every other day
-Their hobby skill level may not exceed 2 ( using mods to reduce any gained skill level)
-The family must have 3-5 children (for me, raising one child would be too easy)
-The household funds cannot exceed $1000 (any extra money should be reduced by buying items and putting them in the inventory and NOT used or by a mod)

Here's a thought - give John the Good trait. Then make him donate money every week (or every day) as repayments on the legal fees. I think you get the choice to donate a hundred or a thousand, so choose either 100 daily, or 1000 every week. If they are raking it in too much, try 1000 daily!

That should keep the money down somewhat, and fits the backstory.

I'm also inclined to give Jane post-natal depression or a nervous breakdown, and thus forbid her earning money in any way. Maybe she can complete the occasional Opportunity for simoleons.

She might also need expensive therapy.

I don't count points, and maybe this challenge isn't meant to go long enough for it to matter, but if sims die of old age that's okay, right?

Yes, if you wish them to. However it would be more of a challenge if you didn't.

Yeah, that's fine. You can only really lose if the whole family dies.

I am playing this with a rule that John makes the highest donation available to him each day - if they have 107, he donates 100. (Larger amounts are greyed out if they don't have the funds.) And he must 'donate' to their court fees every day, so at least 100 has to be available each day. No earning for Jane at all. They are struggling a bit, but they are getting by.

So, how do they earn money with no job and not making any money from painting, fishing, collecting, etc.? I don't understand but I'm wanting to do this challenge...

They are allowed to fish, collect ect. They just can't take a career or profession associated with any of those activities.

Aelflaed!!! You still exist! I was just thinking about you the other day wondering how you were :D

Sorry, what I meant to say was that you can't go into the self-employed careers for them...

Hi Inge! I'm still here, just not very active. Real Life is very busy the last year or two, so not much time for in-depth simming. And certainly no time for learning to mod for TS3. But I hang about in the wings.

Hope you are doing well. I see your posts here and there.

Bump.....

To make this challenge a little harder, I think I'm going to make it into a legacy, so the first generation is Jane and John etc, then by the end of the 10th generation, they have to have got themselves out of poverty and have a household worth of 500,000 or something. Just so I have a bit more of a challenging goal?

If you want to create a legacy you could play the background story for the first gen.

I got distracted from this, but it had become a bit automatic anyway by the time the toddler was into her childhood stage.
Money is not needed to make simkids grow up well, so once they were getting enough to live on and pay the 'legal fees' each day, there was no further challenge. Maybe I should have thought up another twist, in addition to having the child grow up well.

I enjoyed playing. It was interesting, having to dredge up enough cash to pay the donation every day. I am keeping that in mind as a way to keep funds down in future.

It's been brought to my attention that this is not as much as a challenge as I had originally thought so I've added what I call Optional challenges at the end that you can add.

Do you like the Options there? Any recommendations for any more options? What twist did you add when you played this to make it trickier?

I like the idea of building a second, grand property while still maintaining the poor lot. It would keep the money going somewhere useful and give the player more to do. Good idea!