systemsdude
It wasn't more expensive. I was paying for a COBRA health plan but I was eating out a lot less, and it mostly balanced out. Apart from securing health care, there wasn't anything I would have found useful to plan ahead of time. I do wish I had traveled to Europe or Asia, but that's my only regret. It's all "you time" and you can just trust yourself to know what you want to do once you go through the initial recovery from the stress of working. For me, after about seven months I realized I was ready to go back to work, and I was lucky enough to find a job that I've been at since then. I will likely take another extended break, but maybe just 4-5 months, and I will be sure to travel then.
The two negatives were PCR tests. Those are different from antigen tests. The blog post you've linked says there is a problem with false positives with PCR tests, but that doesn't seem to be relevant here, given that both of those results are negative.