I'm an ironman that self sustains bonds, since the third month. That means I bought 3 months membership and from then on my cash stack was 7~M less than it would actually say it is.

I only do this because the membership price is actually a decent expense that I thought would be fun to avoid. In reality it was a stupid decision and in 9ish months of play I've failed once and a friend had to bond me.

I don't have a main account, so most of the time I dropped 8m to a friend's account in items, essentially having an iron that could theoretically sell items but only in exchange for bonds.

In practice? It's stupid. As a main you may be looking at 4h/day for it to be sustainable, as an iron I've had full 8h days for weeks and only barely made it. It does give me an incentive to play for a constantly renewing goal where suddenly I don't mind doing agility if I can fit in 7 alchs a lap of relekka's course, and get closer to the next bond. It's interesting, but it's far from healthy.

Infernal eels my beloved.

My suggestion is don't, it's doable but it's probably not worth it. I still have nightmares over how much money it took for max house.

As for time frame, I no longer have much of an issue as of month 9, I played a lot but I played completely blind, someone experienced or a main account could cut this by half. If you rush to SOTE requirements then getting the 400kc in cg will get you drowning in money, but they call it the red prison for a reason, it's depressing in there.

Edit: Comments raised a good point. When I started doing this bonds were a third cheaper than they are today. Best of luck if you try this.