https://www.privacyguides.org/en/

You should start reading this website. It’s going to answer a lot of questions.

Tor is not the absolute bastion of security! It is a tool with trade-offs both good and bad. It is not a panacea

Check the privacy guide to VPNs. They’ll give you the trade-offs

I’m pretty much also a beginner when it comes to privacy so I’d be gladly corrected, but if you read the Tor manual you’ll see it works best on its own. VPNs offer very limited protection and if you’re looking to reinforce Tor, you might want to look into Tails instead, since Tor is meant to work on its own.

A good first point to make is your operating system. Ditching proprietary software is a must there as well since they have back doors from which they can steal most of your data anyway. Use a Linux distro, preferably not Ubuntu based, however it might be a little harder to use and the difference is not that big afaik. Ubuntu hasn’t given us reason to worry other than that it’s developed by a for profit company, in addition to some additions that were not considered ideal by the open source Linux users. I am typing from memory of some videos I watched though, so if you’re looking for a distro you best do your own research.

One additional necessity is encryption. Use it everywhere you can. Proton mail and other such providers encrypt your emails and allow only the recipient to read them. You can also encrypt your hard drives to protect the information inside them. De-google your devices and use as much open source software as you can. Newpipe or YouTube revanced should be installed instead of the official yt app, Lemmy(as you know lol) instead of reddit, Instagram or any other social media, however this can be hard to execute so what you might want to do instead is delete the apps from your phone and log in to your accounts from a browser that isn’t Tor, since logging in with Tor defeats it’s purpose completely. Alternatively you can use clients for some like frost for Facebook and, as previously mentioned, newpipe or yt revanced.

Finally, you might want to set up a Tor network server in your residence, as it helps hide your own traffic among the others using it. Additionally, the more wide the Tor network is, the more efficient blending in the crowd becomes. In fact, this is tor’s biggest strength. Using any extensions and add-ons to the browser can help make you stand out from the other users and allow others to track you.

Sorry for the long response not necessarily explaining what you were originally asking for, network privacy. But if you are to make your online computing private you must shield yourself from all directions and not leave back doors open at all. It’s not all or nothing but it certainly isn’t a one click wonder either.

TL DR: Leave Tor as is with the strongest default privacy and security settings, replace closed source apps with open source ones(like clients) and get a privacy respecting OS for both phone and PC.

It depends on what you want to achieve.

Encryption (if done right) will protect you against people eavesdropping on your connection, but not against tracking by cookies, device fingerprinting or similar technologies. I.e Google, Facebook etc. will still be able to track your every move. A web browser with good ad/tracking blocking will go a long way here, but if technically feasible you’ll also probably want something like Pi-Hole to complement your browser’s ad blocker and also catch network traffic from other apps.

For better recommendations you’ll probably need to tell us about what exactly it is that you want to protect yourself against.