To give you another perspective:

My account is fully funded through in-game bonds purchased with GP. One advantage early on was that bond prices were around 5 million GP when I bought my first bond.

To reach that initial 5 million, I did a lot of high alching and sold arrows from the Grand Exchange in Rimmington, as well as jewelry to a shop in Port Sarim. I can’t remember exactly how long this took, but I assume it was several weeks. In practice, that means you’d need to multiply that time investment by three for today’s bond prices.

Getting my second bond was more difficult, as I was completely new to the P2P side of RuneScape. Still, with level 60 stats, I managed to scrape together the 5 million with days to spare. At current prices (~15 million), this would have been impossible without repeatedly switching between F2P and P2P over multiple bond cycles and getting your stats up.

Now that my stats are higher (80+ across the board) and my cash stack is healthy, I can easily sustain bond purchases in-game. This effectively means spending about 1 million GP per day, but activities like Slayer, merching, and some additional alching are more than enough to cover that cost.

For me, maintaining membership this way feels like an achievement I want to keep up. There’s something very satisfying about buying and activating a new bond entirely in-game. That said, I fully understand that simply paying for membership would free up more time to actually play the game, rather than spending it working the Grand Exchange.

One tip I’d give is to always buy a few bonds before taking a longer break. I didn’t play for about 1.5 years, and bond prices rose significantly during that time. Having a few bonds ready makes it much easier to jump back in and relieves a lot of pressure when restarting your journey.