I pay the $5/month for GSuite just to get the spam filter.

I'd happily pay someone else $5/month for a similar service, but I can't find a provider that both meets the same price point and has equal spam filtering.

I do this. Highly worthwhile, and my email requires very little effort.

That might remove ads but it does little to assure someone regarding the privacy concerns. Google likely still stores a metric ton of data on you.

Or using adblock