I run one, it's quite easy and reasonably cheap. I admit the main value prop is feeling smug about your opsec, but the self-sovereignty thesis and culture of bitcoin are genuinely important. A small minority of people (nerds) running their own nodes is a way to keep the wider network more honest and help regular people benefit from using it.

There have never been more people that run their own bitcoin/lightning node then there are right now.

See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31673886

I'm glad to see that there are sixteen thousand full nodes because the last I heard there were fewer than ten thousand.

I have never spent actual currency to get Bitcoin but I cannot imagine being serious enough about Bitcoin to put tens of thousands of dollars in Bitcoin but then putting that money in Coinbase or something like that. (sorry YC, I know I was wrong about Dropbox and but I think I am still correct about Coinbase).

Many people do. A large part of Umbrels initial user base falls in that category. A reliable enough 1TB SSD costs <$100. A full bitcoin node takes ~500GB today.