I've been degoogling myself for a while. If anyone is interested in an inexpensive email alternative, mxroute is pretty nice. I got myself a domain and now I have my own personally branded email account.

Also, I heard Jack Dorsey was affiliated with signal. Doing some research, that doesn't appear to be true, but signal seems to be very much endorsed by big tech, that makes me feel weary. I'd go with telegram. I hear they are fighting to not get app store banned, so seems like they're the guys we want to be with right now.

Just my opinion though, I'm open to being convinced otherwise