The VPN service fad is full of a LOT of great marketing campaigns, but it really isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. VPNs are incredibly useful for certain use cases, but for individual privacy and security it’s very ‘meh’.
There are a lot of methods for tracking locations other than your public IP, and so long as you’re using personally identifiable accounts it doesn’t really matter if your IP lists you in Panama. Unless you’re using the VPN to bypass firewall restrictions on your local network, access remote resources, or establish a site-to-site connection between locations, the only thing that’s really accomplished is shifting the burden of trust from the ISP to the VPN provider.
My advice, spend the money on ice cream instead. If you need to lookup something anonymously, use vanilla Tor and don’t sign into any accounts that could be traced back to you while on the Tor network.
**edit: spelling
Porkbun because it is wholesome as heck