If you are willing to buy a pixel from a store that resells them you'd evade paying google. You can get GrapheneOS which IS a very secure OS ... They have a feature called Sandboxes Google Play which is compatible with overwhelming majority of apps compared to MicroG. I think you'd really like what grapheneOS has to offer

Please know that Sandboxed Google Play does not use any additional privileges and makes googles apps run in sandbox like any random app you install would.