> But I know that I don't use mail that often. I'll probably use it to sign up and send out applications, but that's about it. Shelling out $10 a month for something I rarely use seems a bit steep to me.

If this is your true use case, then self hosting is your lowest cost option. Self hosting on your own server in your own home costs you only the amount of electricity that server consumes. And for email hosting, you can utilize a very low powered server. An email server is very low load (unless you are getting DDOS'ed, but then your real problem is not a low power email server).

Take a look at Postfix ( http://www.postfix.org/ ). It is quite easy to setup for simple email serving (and your description is of simple serving). You will have to learn a little bit, but will be better for having done so.