I must be living right or something.....
In the past, I've broken every rule listed above fairly often due to a lot of CTD's caused by overheating issues and had only one corrupted save.
I've cut back the number of times I save now after getting my CTD issues worked out and I try to save keeping all the above rules in mind, but I do break them occasionally and have not had any problems.....yet.
(Excuse me while I go looking for place to knock on wood.)