The spending here is unusual in that the most effective items are among the cheapest, and several of the most effective are free. That is not true of much else in household budgeting, and it is worth taking advantage of before considering anything with a monthly fee attached.
What follows is ordered by how much protection each dollar buys.
1. A password manager
The single highest value purchase available, and the annual cost is comparable to a couple of takeout meals. Some capable options are free.
What it buys is the thing that actually stops the common attack: a genuinely different password on every account, none of which you have to remember. Password reuse is the mechanism behind most household account compromises, and this eliminates it outright rather than reducing it. It also gives you an inventory of every account you own, which turns out to be useful in its own right.
2. An authenticator app, which is free
Second factors come in tiers. A code sent by text is much better than nothing and is tied to your phone number, which can be taken. A code generated by an app on your device involves no carrier and no network, so it cannot be intercepted the same way.
Costing nothing, taking about a minute per account to set up, and removing the weakest link in most recovery chains. Start with email, then banking, then anything holding money or personal records.
3. A hardware security key
A small physical device, roughly the price of a decent tool, that plugs in or taps and proves you are present. It is the strongest widely available second factor because it verifies the site as well as the user, which means it resists the convincing fake login page that defeats everything else.
Buy two and register both, keeping one somewhere safe, since the failure mode with these is losing the only one. This is the right purchase for anyone whose email account is the key to a business or to household finances.
4. A real backup service
Versioned, automatic, and separate from any sync folder. The distinction matters: sync copies the current state everywhere, including a bad current state, while a backup keeps history you can go back into.
Household plans are inexpensive and the value is concentrated in a single event you hope never happens. Test it twice a year by restoring one file and opening it, which is the step that separates a backup from an assumption.
5. A router that still gets updates
The least visible item and one of the more important. A home router is the device every other device sits behind, and manufacturers stop issuing security updates for models after a period that is often shorter than the time people keep them.
Check whether yours is still supported, and if it is not, replacing it is a one time cost in the range of a mid sized appliance repair. While you are in there, change the administrative password from whatever it shipped with and turn on automatic updates.
6. A credit freeze, which costs nothing at all
Included on a list of purchases specifically because people assume it costs money. It is free at each of the three nationwide bureaus, it takes about twenty minutes to place at all three, and lifting it temporarily when you apply for something takes a few minutes online.
It is the only item here that prevents an account being opened in your name rather than telling you afterward. Each bureau has its own page and its own quirks, and the walkthrough the Federal Trade Commission keeps is easier to follow than any of the three.
Three that mostly sell comfort
None of these is a scam and each does something real. They are placed here because the money buys less than the marketing implies, and because most households would get more from the six items above.
Identity theft protection subscriptions largely bundle monitoring, which reports after the fact, with insurance covering expenses you are unlikely to incur and assistance you can obtain free. If the bundled restoration service is genuinely valuable to you, that is a reasonable thing to buy. Just know that the protection part is mostly notification.
Consumer antivirus suites have narrowed in value as operating systems have built in their own protection, which for most households is now adequate. The paid suites add features of varying usefulness, and the one thing they cannot do is stop a person from typing their password into a convincing fake page, which is how most compromises happen.
A consumer virtual private network hides your traffic from the network you are on and moves that visibility to the provider instead. That is genuinely useful on untrusted public networks and for privacy from an internet provider. It is often sold as protection against hacking and account theft, which is not what it does.
What to do with a limited budget
If you can spend nothing, do three things: unique passwords managed by a free tool, an authenticator app on your email account, and a credit freeze. That combination closes the paths actually used against households, and it costs an evening.
If you can spend a little, add the backup service and check the router. Everything after that is refinement, and refinement is a perfectly good place to be.