I absolutely agree (in addition to trust, privacy and security, pricing, speed, and reliability are important factors for me also, as well as Linux compatibility)
Call me a cheapskate but I see ~$5-6 a month upper limit of what I’m willing to pay for a VPN at this time.
edit: in hindsight this is off topic but relevant
Two other affordable options you might want to consider are:
AirVPN is not recommended by PG because it lacks 3rd party audits and doesn’t see the value in paying to have one done. Windscribe may be listed in the future, there is an open pull request but it has beel stalled for over a year, it seems the main blockers are (were?) audits and open sourcing the iOS client.