VPN strategy for a home network

[feffer]

As a trial, I installed Wireguard on a few machines and my Apple mobile phone. Testing at home showed good connectivity and little drop-off in speed. Not so with the cell phone away from home...very slow and dodgy. Also, my setup is encrypted, but not anonymous. I like Wireguard as it is integral to the linux kernel. Express VPN claims to have "wireguard-like" setup...not sure exactly what that means. Proton VPN actually uses Wireguard, but is a little more pricey. There are a few others like Cyber Ghost, and Nord VPN, but I got limited information about them.

My questions: I've gotten along w/o vpn for a long time and the only downside I actually see is a lot of spam email...is it really worth the trouble? Any recommendations for a good VPN service and why.

Edit: after posting, I saw a lot of VPN comments...seems that there are more than a few gotcha's that affect installs on linux, connectivity, speed etc. So recommendations are greatly appreciated.

[The Muffin Man]

I recently became a 100% remote worker. I had to deep dive into networking, with 3 company computers at the house. Though I'm still no expert, I chose a router with VPN for my home network. I can use it while at home, or use it to connect to the other 2 computers in the house when I'm traveling with my laptop. Additionally, my company (not mine, but you know what I mean) uses a VPN. In the case where the VPN to my company drops and I'm on the road, I can use the router VPN to connect to my home PCs and then re-connect them to my company VPN.

I can (if I choose) to route all my outbound traffic through the VPN as well.

[fstjohn]

I use Private Internet Access (PIA) with kill switch enabled. PIA uses the kernel Wireguard and has a very nifty GUI interface for Linux. I considered getting a router with built-in or loadable VPN but decided against it. If you run into a site that won't let you connect with a VPN you'd have to disable it through the router interface, seems to me.

[The Muffin Man]

Just drop your vpn client. You don't have to disable the router VPN.