I started self-hosting a few years ago for privacy reasons. Now I do it for a mix of reasons. I got my current job because I was one of the only applicants who had experience using Linux outside of a classroom. Last weekend I spent a day learning how podman play kube
worked because it was fun and because it'll be useful to know for a new app we're deploying at work.
...it's certainly not cost though. This shit gets expensive.