Ah, so that's where all the 5K+ wishes came from! Congratulations on your win!
My first move in the game was to invite over Stile McGraw and Tamara Donner. Their wishes were Swimming in Cash and Living in the Lap of Luxury. Once they had moved in, I moved Agnes in, and their wishes were complete when I sold her car.
I then moved Judy Bunch and all of her children in, and like others, adopted a child and aged them up and her wish was complete.
A big part of my beginning strategy was having teens in the house and aging them up - that way I got to choose their Lifetime Wishes, rather than having to buy the reward "Change Lifetime Wish".
Lifetime Rewards were probably the biggest part of my strategy.
The most important one was Motive Mobile - I got one of these as soon as I could, and every time someone completed their lifetime wish, I'd get another if they had enough happiness points. This way, all 8 of my sims could eventually have one Motive Mobile each, and not ever have to worry about eating, sleeping, showering, going to the toilet or getting stressed.
The other lifetime rewards I used were (in order of how important I saw them):
- Change Lifetime Wish: For Sims who, later in the game, had wishes I'd already completed
- Mid-life Crisis: So I could change the traits of the Sims - all Sims that had a career related lifetime wish were given the workaholic trait so that they could work at home
- Fast Learner: For Sims with skill related lifetime wishes, to help them learn faster
- Collection Helper: Helped very much with the Monster Maker and Zoologist lifetime wishes
I think that's all there was to my strategy. Though I wish that I'd tried some of the Ambitions professions closer to the start of the game, rather than the end. I was only 2 cases of finishing the Pervasive Private Eye lifetime wish!