My 2 cents: I have a similar relation with smartphones as yours.
In my case, what I fear the most is some app getting my contact list and using it to send some kind of “XXX has joined YYY service” notification to all of them. Also, I didn’t like that Google had all the data they wanted, so I ended with 2 smartphones:
One de-googled (LineageOS without Google Apps) that I use for calls and trusted apps. This one has my contacts list.
One default Android-Google without simcard for those apps that require oficial-Android (mainly banks apps) and any app I’m afraid could mess with the contact list.
AFAIK I’ve only had one incident because I trusted Telegram too much. There is always non-zero risk, but this works for me.