Learn to utilize Bitcoin and its features in a decentralized manner.

You now can do everything with Bitcoin when it comes to financial freedom. You can trade, swap, lend, and borrow all financial activities using just Bitcoin from either layer one or layers on top of it.

If you want cheap transactions for small transactions like buying a cup of coffee, you can use Lightning Network by opening your own LN channel, which will be involved in creating your channel. But you could also win your channel by playing games like Sarutobi, asking members of the Bitcoin community to open a channel to your node. And the last form is by outright buying incoming channel liquidity from a Lightning Network provider. Or the last form which I don't recommend is using any LN custodian wallet like the Wallet of Satoshi, ChivoWallet, and others.

Running your LN channels is not that hard once you are willing to learn how to do it. I have run mobile nodes, full clear net nodes and even Tor nodes is just a matter to want to learn, and I have used custodians too. Mind you I don't leave funds sitting there for much time.

You could also use custodians in Lightning Network to exchange from fiat to crypto or vice versa. And once you have your funds clear move funds to your channels or even to a sidechain called Rootstock utilizing bridges from LN to rBTC.

You can also use BISQ to get in and out of fiat and use Rootstock as your default DeFi network and only go to layer one for long-term savings. You can use decentralized exchanges like Sovryn to trade, swap, lend, borrow, and much more and all without having to surrender your private keys.

The easiest way could be to just use layer one but at times you may need more sophisticated tools that are when you will have other layers on top of layer one to do all the economic activities that you may wish.

Sovryn as a Bitcoin decentralized exchange is a feature and also a protocol because it allows you to trade real decentralized stablecoins that are backed by Bitcoin itself instead of a third party like USDC, USDT, and others. And I would say that DollarOn-chain and ZeroDollar are better than even DAI because those last stablecoins are backed by Bitcoin instead of any other altcoin.

You don't need to just trade against decentralized stablecoins but also against other tokens that have a real utility behind them and are not just meme tokens without any clear usage utility.

You may have heard that Bitcoin is slow and that its technology is behind others but the truth is that Bitcoin layer one itself has not been modified to maintain its security other networks are being built on top of Bitcoin that will work as second layer protocols and at times as sidechains but in the end, it will be all a single network capable of doing more than just interchanging value but moving all financial activity on top of the Bitcoin.