Each to their own.
I intend on using BTC as a store of value but will deffo make an effort to send XMR to nostriches who accept it. 

 there's a meme for this.
but basically,

CJs are expensive,
utxos management is hard,
you need to be organized so you dont compromise whatever privacy you gain,
and
as of today,
without Whirlpool there are NO good CJ implementations active,
so it's not really an option anyway

So you could figure out a kludgey and expensive workaround,
study up on the CJ implementation so you really understand what kind of entropy you are gaining
and what foot guns are possible
etc

or you could
you know,
just use monero. 

 I'm willing to make that effort to both preserve my privacy and be wealthy

Plus all my spending is over lightning which already has near perfect privacy so double makes monero useless to me

I gave it an honest chance, had some and mined some, but all I could do with it was lose purchasing power and buy drugs 

 If LN is private it's only because nobody is looking (yet).
and its only sender privacy, we know receive privacy is nonexistent.

But you're really just giving up custody arent you??? Just recreate the fiat system online and trust the bank right? 😩 

 You don't have to give up any custody to use lightning, you just have to run your own node. (It's hard I admit)

With a bit of effort you can receive with privacy as well. 

 I have been looking into the Alby Hub thing...
But yeah, so far LN has definitely not been a legitimate privacy tool. Maybe the UX improving with sovereign nodes will change that.

or maybe ecash will.

but they haven't yet and every year the maxis are crowing about *something* that will do the job.
but there's just nothing so far except noise.

monero remains undefeated. 

 Have you looked into Zeus? Only lightning wallet with acceptable privacy from the LSP. 

 I installed it after their big update to try it out.

It did not just work and I couldn't be pissed to screw around with it  

 Yeah it's a bit clunky but worth looking into it. First lightning wallet I feel comfortable using instead if xmr. For most things at least. 

 I use Phoenix for when I need to use LN.
It's ok for my threat model. 

 Pretty clean wallet but they see the destination of your payments. I like their buying incoming liquidity option. Soon Zeus will have the same. 

 Plus utxo that are from or only a few hops removed from coinjoins will be rejected in more and more places. To be fair, lightning fixes this to some extent. 

 You assuming that Monero Bros are not "rich in fiat terms"  is very interesting as most people I know in Monero have been in Bitcoin from the very beginning and most of them have a core position in Bitcoin.

So I guess it is them who started to value their privacy much more early than you as they akready have a need for a private store of value and a means to privately spend their Bitcoins.