VPNs are likely honey pots unless you host it yourself also I trust my ISP more than some random company on the Internet.
I have no such workload that would require non-free software but I use some proprietary software on Android with internet access blocked. I guess you could monitor your traffic to make sure they are not malicious, however Spotify, Netflix and many other common apps always have DRM malware built in them and you never know what other “features” they might have now or in the future.
I agree with you he is very smart in some things and has no malice. Only that Windows cannot be made safe but he claims it is because he is so stubborn on using video editor (adobe? eek)