Should I move away from Google yet?

I've been getting more interested in privacy and stuff I can do for it, currently I'm looking at moving away from using Google for my email and all of my sign-ins. Issue is, at the moment I'm still in education and do not (yet) have a job, so I'm worried about starting to pay for a private email provider and not being able to make one of the payments. What happens in this situation??

I know there are free ones …

can education email google issue job moving privacy sign