I use wildcards for some stuff, but I mostly just use [email protected] and have my real email for friends and family private. It’s not liked I get emails from friends and family anymore anyway. Everything is iMessage or SMS.
I let one of mine expire a few years ago. Finally decided I wanted to try to register it again, but a squatter is now sitting on it asking for something like $10k $3.6k.
Edit: just double-checked, they lowered the price to only $3595!
i did recently go through and turn off auto renewal on a few. I still have several projects i never launched though that I’m holding out hope for… someday