Unable to make a positive cash flow

[Sinsidious]

At what point does your city start making cash? Seems like you need choose between barely makeing any cash flow or your citizens happiness.

[mackster]

From around MS6, you should be in profit.

Prior to this, dont need to worry.

Just make sure you only zone on demand, dont build upgrades until absolutely necessary and make sure you are selling excess power and water. Ensure you have decent education and all your cims have limited negatives

[Mason]

Rush geothermal power (They cost negative money to maintain for the first three), build no city services other than electricty, water, and sewage. Branch out to city services when electricity export puts you into the black.

[4FCG]

Getting a massive powerplant to overproduce is an easy 150k income.
And do not be afraid to crank up the taxes.

[CH13F]

usually if u done correctly, you get positive income inbetween 6th-7th milestone. at least thats what i get in my case.

[icedude94]

Rush the recycling plant. You get a ton of money from garbage service fees now.

Get an elementary and high school down. They're needed to get your industry and commercial up to level 3. College and university as soon as you can afford it to start getting companies up to level 5.

Then wait.

The income from the garbage service fees will carry you over till your citizens get educated and start getting well educated and highly educated jobs and you start getting office demand.

Well educated and highly educated you should view as your only real net tax payers. Think of the uneducated, poorly educated as net losses when it comes to taxes vs expenses on city services to keep them happy. Educated are just break even.

Don't discount them though. Uneducated and poorly educated will make up the bulk of the workforce in all of your specialized industry and resource extractor zones as well as some of your government service workforce.

Level 5 companies will mostly only be hiring educated and up.

[sanderrensink]

Originally posted by Sinsidious:

At what point does your city start making cash? Seems like you need choose between barely makeing any cash flow or your citizens happiness.

try to make a mix in the commerciele zones from car park and park, around the commericel zones anough residentel zones. You better info in commerciel zone tab in left corner.

https://steamcommunity.com/id/rednas12/screenshot/2272690916285731575/

[ΔIR CΔRDINΔL]

A big financial help is selling power to neighbours. Early on, try to unlock tiles bordering neighbouring cities.

As an example, my current city has 3 wind farms consisting of 20 turbines each with solar and blade upgrades (don't bother with the battery). As it happens, the highlands map I'm using has strong winds across the borders, allowing me to keep them away from residents that will complain about the noise.

Give each wind farm it's own transformer station (you'll need this to convert low voltage to high) and link up with the border using the high voltage pylons. You may still use low voltage lines to supply the city, but get in the habit of using a grid rather than just a single line as it can bottleneck, suffocating the city severely if you're not watching it. Both low and high power lines can go underground, too. Which can help keep things tidy.

A similar method for supplying water to neighbours exists, too, but isn't anywhere near as profitable.

More advice for earning a better income for your city involves taxes. Tax is the blood your city survives on, so keep your citizens happy by constantly responding to various needs. Higher taxes earn you more in the short run but obviously makes people unhappy. Lower taxes can actually earn you more in the long run, because people are more likely to stay and more people want to move to your city, meaning more tax payers. You'll notice this more as the population grows and you'll want to encourage this more for a faster reward. Transport and education will also become more profitable if placed right.

When you start seeing low density zoned buildings start to complain about high rent, especially if you have set your taxes quite low (AND decent services provided), this can be treated as a good thing. It's an indicator that the areas that this is occurring are ready for medium or high density development. That means more people per smaller space to pay tax and for everything else that your city offers.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3096026522

[Sinsidious]

Thanks for the info. I went with hydro power plant. I'm making 31k/hr with it. I tried the garbage service and the fees was sporadic couldn't tell if I was making enough from fees to cover the maintenance.

[Lord_Reavous]

Yeah I got tired of the negative balance with simple industry exports so I rushed the nuke plant for fun--even with having to build a brand new dedicated water service for it, it makes bank.

[Apples]

Originally posted by Sinsidious:

Thanks for the info. I went with hydro power plant. I'm making 31k/hr with it. I tried the garbage service and the fees was sporadic couldn't tell if I was making enough from fees to cover the maintenance.

Honestly, don't worry about it, i started turning a profit somewhere at 5k pop after halving the services, and then just buying a geothermal plant and selling the power.

at 8k? now, i put them back upto 100% and still doing fine.

[Rdizz]

Id wager you are plopping down police stations and Dr. Offices early etc etc. You don't need to do any of that, Just build and the game will literally throw money at you. And more money once you can start making specialized industry. Few levels later you will be getting basically unlimited money to put 20 services in each district if you want.

[jitter]

I'm really surprised by the comments here. I just started my first city, did not care about finances at all, build all the services etc. and started making money really soon. Now I'm at 100k pop and I make +9000k per month (23000k in, 14000k out). I just came to the discussions sections to see if anyone else finds this way to easy. It kinda removes all difficulty and fun. It seems like I'm getting most money from taxing "software" companies.

Out of curiosity I just started a new game but it seems like there are no difficulty options or anything that I could change to make it more of a challenge. Anybody an idea? Am I the only one to make insane money without any effort?

[Rdizz]

Originally posted by jitter:

I'm really surprised by the comments here. I just started my first city, did not care about finances at all, build all the services etc. and started making money really soon. Now I'm at 100k pop and I make +9000k per month (23000k in, 14000k out). I just came to the discussions sections to see if anyone else finds this way to easy. It kinda removes all difficulty and fun. It seems like I'm getting most money from taxing "software" companies.

Out of curiosity I just started a new game but it seems like there are no difficulty options or anything that I could change to make it more of a challenge. Anybody an idea? Am I the only one to make insane money without any effort?

No, the game just throws money at you. It's a no loss situation. I really think the only way to go bamkrupt is to place all services down first thing but even so the level rewards may stop that I dunno.