Don't use VPN services
gist.github.com
gist.github.com
They are good for escaping an ISP that messes with your traffic and injects things or a country with soft Internet censorship (where soft means they won't arrest you, they just block stuff arbitrarily). They're not anywhere near what Tor or a similar system will give you -- but that comes at a cost of speed and complexity.
I also agree that the best VPN is one you set up yourself on a VPS that you control. Not everyone knows how to (or wants to) do that, but if you can it's great. One of the cheap tiny VPS offerings from Digital Ocean or Vultr.com is great as a personal VPN endpoint and can also double as a personal web server, backup repo, etc.
But aren't you "just" renting the VPS from companys like Digital Ocean just as you would rent the VPN access from somewhere else?
So if the VPN seller has means and probably does log your traffic and will give you up, how would a VPS seller like Digital Ocean be different? Surely they log your traffic as well? I mean, they have to if they offer dynamic pricing by usage and by offering packages like 1TB or 2TB traffic.
It seems to me like this would be an applicable usage of a shared VPN service. Of course I am trusting that the VPN service isn't selling my traffic to some other tracking company. I am I wrong in using a VPN for this function, is there a better way?
As you said, you don't want companies to know about you, but you give your whole life to them. Unless you trust them, but why would you?
I do recognize that is a point of failure. The only companies that know me in such a manner are Amazon, Facebook, and Google (Gmail and calendar, and I'm going to be changing that). Third parties could otherwise piece together what websites I visit to get a more in-depth picture of who I am more so that what Amazon can figure out from my purchase habits; Facebook can figure out from who my friends are, what I like, pictures I'm in, etc; and from what Google could by reading my e-mails or seeing the events in my calendar.