If you are trying to get away from custodial lightning, either create for yourself a 1mil plus channel or save in liquid until you have enough to start a 1mil plus channel. Liquid gets a bad wrap, but if you are trying to stack in a high fee environment, i dont think the answer is burn all your money on trying to get a mini lightning channel to work. Liquid is objectively safer than trusting a single custodial entity. Get at least a mil stacked in phoenix and then transfer it to cold when its full before you incur fees for going over inbound. Liquid and lightning will consolidate into 1 utxo, but most opt for nc lightning, it just requires capital to get started.