My first 12 seasons were played with token farming only, hence why there was some disappointing statistics from L9 to L12... L2 was difficult because it was hard to build a squad with the lack of $ and T to begin with, plus that season we had a good competitor that pushed us all the way to the end.
Soon July Fourth will drop to either a much lower token budget (IE 500T a season) or just become farming only once again. I'm spending way too much cash and time on the game!
If you worked really hard on farming, (which you probably already do) you shouldn't need to buy those extra amount of tokens since I can obtain around 200-300 on a season on average.