Is this good advice for those who can't afford a hardware wallet?
Using a Bitcoin Electrum wallet or other, disconnect from the internet before generating a new seed and never connecting to the internet again.
Until you are ready to sell everything in that wallet.
Is this practice similar to using a hardware wallet? This advice came from a man I know who said to have been keeping his BTC since 2013 in the same manner, he said the internet/online is the culprit or enemy of every crypto wallet.
I will advice to go airgapped.
Meaning that you will generate the wallet offline and till the end of time it will never be connected to the internet.
To be very safe from online threats you need to keep your recovery seed completely offline, don't just generate the wallet offline and that is all, you must never connect the wallet online again.
This days hardware wallets are not costly anymore, I know one company that still do discount offers since last year till today, with $100 and above you will get your hands on a good airgapped device like Keystone hardware wallet.
You have no excuse not to have a Airgapped hardware wallet today.