You have various instances pop up over time, and some answers provide more risk than others. If someone insults you or your spouse or other family, then you can either ignore/forgive them or insult them back, or assault them. If you assault someone, even if you are justified, be ready for the risk of jail or prison. If you get locked up, you lose your job, and your relationships suffer, as well. But your finances won’t quit draining your money.
Even seemingly innocent instances, such as trying a craft beer or trying some weed, could put you at risk of addiction, which would then necessitate going to rehab. Becoming addicted to alcohol, or trying a hard drug such as PCP or cocaine, also puts you at risk of an early death, or of losing your job and/or all of your money, so be careful what kind of risky business you try, unless you just want to experiment with your character and see what kind of shenanigans you can get them into without killing them or ruining their lives.
You can choose to go to the witch doctor at random times whenever you want to, and they will offer you some weird ingredient to eat, such as a raw Komodo dragon egg. This does nothing unless you have some sort of condition that a doctor can’t heal, such as schizophrenia or infertility. Even then, going to the witch doctor most often won’t do anything, but you can always give it a try. If they don’t work, your stats could drop hard.
Whenever an update comes out for the game, make sure that you finish out your character’s life, unless you don’t care about losing them. If you lose them, you won’t be able to get them back and will have to start from a new character. Also, if you start a new character in the middle of your current character’s life, you’ll lose your current character.
You can also consciously end the life of your current character at any time you want, and you’ll get the full gravestone and cause of death treatment with them. Bizarrely, you can even do this with infants. If you want the full death treatment, choose the “End life” option, but if you want to skip all of that, then simply pick the “Start a New Life” option instead.
Being smart and having good looks take a really long time to achieve if you are not born with them. If you’re not smart, tap “school” and study harder, and go to the library and gym often to increase your smarts. If you’re not good looking, then gym (minor differences) and plastic surgery (major differences) are your best bet. Smarts affect school and jobs, and looks affect jobs, job interviews, and quality of spouse.