I decided today to renew Emsisoft Anti-Malware Home which served me well last year. It was just £30 which is right in my price range. I did debate about Emisoft but it's £15 more per year for the Premium and £5 more for the basic Eset protection. Emsisoft runs well and does what it does without hassle. Also controls WF and CyberLock is my backup 0-day which also creates WF rules for blocked files.
Emsisoft uses between 600 and 800mb RAM with memory optimization disabled. With my 16-gig ram and i5-12500H chip running a full screen game, 12 edge tabs open and Thunderbird in the background I still have 5-6 gig ram free and CPU only at around 35% so it's not affecting performance.
Anyway, thought it was time for a change and if I get super paranoid I can add CF .8012 again at some point though waiting on this certificate resolution is getting a bit long in the tooth.
Part of the reason not relying on MD is that I have Win 11 Home, I don't have Pro and don't have office 365 so I miss out on added protection from those and I'd rather pay the £30 to Emsisoft rather than £80+ to Microsoft for office and extra features.
Oh and I turn 50 this coming Monday so that's a thing