To be fair, it doesn’t seem that those who care about privacy really have an option. Even from a pro-privacy perspective, opening yourself up to cyber threats wouldn’t be great for privacy so I couldn’t imagine justifying trading security updates for less data collection. It seems that picking the cheapest Samsung phone you can find (in my area, the A05/A06 doesn’t seem to be available, only the A15 and presumably the upcoming A16?) and following configuration and best practices advice is the only option for those in precarious financial situations.
UPDATE: For anyone reading in the future, I’d also like to link to my comment here where I go more in-depth on cost comparisons of Pixel vs Galaxy phones.