VPNs like mentioned are nice when you use public WIFI or some VPNs offer an App that can be used in your phone. If you're at a hotel using their free VPN it may be prudent to use a VPN. Even if you use an airplane's WIFI. It's VERY easy to sniff all the traffic on an open WIFI connection and perform MiTM attacks to bypass TLS. Also, people are using something called Kodi in a modified Amazon Firestick to stream free stuff, so a VPN in the router becomes necessary.
Now on the subject of whether you should hide your online IP address is a different matter. For the most part you don't have to, but it dose help Google et al use it for analytics. Another thing is that I wouldn't go publicly posting my IP address all over the net. If your router has a vulnerability (which many do) a hacker can turn it into a zombie and use it to conduct shady business. I can't tell you how many infected routers try to do things on my site. All legit IPs, not cloud hosters or anything like that. If you're hacking someone you don't use your home IP address. You'd run a server or thought other servers or infected routers which they do. But if your router is vulnerable from the get go, you don't even have to tell anyone your IP and it will get found eventually to be turned into a zombie. The FBI has warned about this. You can mitigate it by staying abreast of all firmware updates, changing the default username and password, don't allow port forwarding and turn off UPnP. I use third -party firmware for my router. Done that since circa 2006. Used to run DD-WRT and now I run ASUS Merlin.
Anyway, VPNs are in fact big business entangled with a lot of scare tactics. And this very topic will probably try to get spammed because of the business it attracts. I've written a post about how to select a good VPN here:
https://cyberpcforum.com/viewtopic.php?p=1491#p1491 It's what I have learned thus far.
To answer your question. Do you need a VPN? No.
And Shodan knows all...