The Slacker 411

The Slacker 411

First, in the interest of transparency I should probably admit that I find the Slacker-based professions preferable to the traditional career path, because of the freedom that they embrace in allowing your Sim to work when they want to, where they want to, and pretty much do all the other things that they want to do (assuming that they are bringing in enough money to cover the bills and get a little ahead).  That is the beauty of these professions, and I believe it is a strong reason why they were added to the Ambitions expansion as self-employed professions in the first place!

No matter which of these you end up choosing -- or even which one you do first -- you will find that one key component of them all is that you have to exercise self-discipline over your Sim and keep them on-task at least part of every day, or you will fail to progress at a reasonable pace and worse, fail to earn enough to pay the bills, and really that is not a good thing.

On the other hand once you get pretty much any of these professions mastered the money you will be making will allow your Sim to do all of the good things in life, including travel, buy luxury items, and build their own palace (or whatever passes for one in their mind).  At a minimum when your Sims follow the non-traditional path your focus should be (in addition to getting them a comfortable and happy place to live) investing in the different businesses in town and owning a few too.  Having alternate sources of income will never be something you regret, and owning a piece of three or four businesses means that even if you have a bad month you can still pay the bills.

One of the significant draws to starting out with one of these professions rather than a career is that they allow you the leeway and freedom to work on a variety of skills without having to work around a schedule.  Taking advantage of the predictable income and easy of living that Painting or Sculpting can offer you means being able to cap-off skills like Charisma, Handiness, Logic, and Athletics much easier, which will allow you to quickly progress in most of the traditional careers -- and specifically in the Law Enforcement, Military, and Business Careers -- which really adds to their attractiveness.

As was previously touched upon these non-traditional professions work best when you have two Sims in the household with one following a traditional career while the other pursues a non-traditional one, as that allows them to double-up as Slacker and the Majordomo of the household, keeping everything running smoothly while making great strides in their own profession as well.  That pretty much sums up the major points -- save for one final parting word before we dive into the non-traditional professions: remember this is a game; it is about having fun!