everyone has different tradeoffs and goals, but I'm personally all about prioritizing security over privacy. If you lose your stack (whether theft or its in economically unspendable small UTXOs) privacy is pointless imho.
What could be worse than in 2039 having $5m Bitcoin, but your stack is effexticelh worthless because it’s in tiny (for 2039) UTXOs?
You got valuable experience on a useful tool, that was worth the fees paid regardless of the path forward in my mind.
My own north star: plan for Bitcoin to be $5M and stack accordingly.