Do not chain to another google account if you can avoid it. The risks here are huge: if you lose control of one, And google decide it's tainted, you may lose control of the other.

Outlook.com may be a sensible alternate. Low barrier to entry. I am in pobox.com and have used fastmail (which owns pobox now) which has some upsides: pobox is a redirection service not really a mailbox but it provides carrier-independence.

Don't home it in an ISP email box you can lose, if you stop using that ISP.