Self hosting is actually crazy cheap compared to any kind of corporate solution. Anybody paying for SquareSpace, for instance, could cut their cost by a factor of 20 or more with a FOSS alternative like Ghost Blog.
I know my setup is over engineered a little so I pay a bit more, but my expenses are still under $100 per year for subscription services that support the self hosting.
$2.50 per month for a VPN.
$40 per year for two VPS’s (this is what I know I overpay for since I didn’t really know how much I needed when I set it up, but the time to change it is worth more to me than the extra $10 per year).
$17ish per year for a domain name.
Plex lifetime pass (around $100 one time).
And of course, ten million dollars in man hours spent learning how to use Linux.
My wife says she wishes she could make me scream like Linux does. I told her she would if I could put it in her bash.
She leaves me alone when I’m on the computer now. It’s quiet in here.