I disable absolutely everything on the home page/new tabs.
My home page is ~/home.html in all browsers. Thus it's the same in Chrome, FF, w3m, whatever. Much easier than remembering how to set bookmarks/favorites in different browsers and keep them all in sync.
Last time I checked, loading local files as a new tab page required either installing a third party add-on/extension or creating your own[0] in both Firefox and Chrome.
Is that still the case? Did you find an easier option?
[0] Way easier than one would assume, you just need a manifest file next to your HTML file.
EDIT: A local web server instead of loading the HTML file directly also works and avoids the need for add-ons/extensions.
When I enable "Highlights" on the new tab page, I see pages I spent a lot of time on lately: e.g. OpenWRT recommended hardware page, Coney Island water temperature page, and a page about the Graphwiz format. None of them are related to anything in Pocket (which I also actively use), or, thank goodness, buzzfeed.