Again my goal is not to be invisible as I completely agree this is impossible. My goal is to add additional hurdles that would deter the average hacker away and prevent sofisticated actors like governments from bulk collection of our data. If everyone used a VPN it would be a huge task if they required court orders to prove probably cause for a large population of people. Again this is a protection of rights issue for me nothing more.I wouldn't trust any paid-for-VPN as much as you seem to be able to. No court orders are needed from someone in as high enough power as you're fearing (government).
If you want to be as invisible as possible, online, you need to stop having your own ISP. You need a 'burner' device that you only use once over a coffee shop's free WiFi, and you need to stop using your 'smartphone' (no matter how 'dumb' the model you use, is).
Anything else is wishful thinking, expensive and just gives you a false sense of security where none exists.
And for your friend, you may trust him. But you have no idea what his ISP is doing, either.