I have found the lowest cost way to acquire crypto is through paypal. You can link to your bank account or deposit cash at thousands of retail locations (CVS, Walgreens, Kroger etc).
Buy pyUSD and a little be of SOL. No fee for pyUSD, send both to your exodus wallet and use the Jupiter exchange onthe web3 app to convert the pyUSD to any coin on the SOL network for very low fees. Rather than messing with USDT and figuring out the vendor's network and then swaping your coins to that network, just pay in SOL or ETH or TRON if they take it.
SOL is relatively stable and no confusion as to which network you need to use. If the vendor takes pyUSD you don't even need to convert it. Just send it from paypal to your wallet and then to the vendor. pyUSD is only on the SOL network, so again, no confusion around which network to use.
BTC is also easy but very unstable and the price can change from the time you send to the time the vendor receives, and then your order is held up because you're short $2.
Communication with vendors is already difficult and slow, so I try to keep it to a minimum. Ask for their SOL address and send it, DM a copy of the hash/receipt, done. Sometimes they will give you the wrong USDT network or don't specify the network, then you risk your money being lost into the ether. or you lose a day waiting for them to provide the details you need to send to their wallet.
You CAN buy crypto through exodus with a debit card but it tends to be relatively expensive buying that way.
For taxes, I used Koinly.io. It connected to my Exodus wallets, download all of my transactions calculated my gain/loss and provides the reports to import into Turbotax. It probably added 10 minutes to my tax filing process and if you are just buying and spending coins you won't have enough gains or losses to impact your taxes either way.
