$20 per month for 400mb of email + a VPN was an acceptable cost maybe in 1998, now it’s insanely expensive
For tailscale, for personal use i don’t see why the free plan is not enough, you need more than 3 users? ACLs can still be edited on the free plan.
And then you need to tell us why you’re using the VPN. Just privacy when using unsecured wifi? Or ISP tracking paranoia? Or torrenting? By default tailscale does not route any WAN traffic, it can optionally use one of your nodes as an exit node, but that’s it. You mention “leaving your desktop to be 24/7” so you don’t have a server at home. If you run tailscale on the way that means the exit node will be off and you are not using a VPN. Because you’re using your own connection, it does not solve ISP tracking or torrenting issues.