So all my photos dating back to 2002 are in folders, grouped by year, on my external HD, which is then backed up regularly via Backblaze.
I have a reminder set for the 1st of every month to download all my photos from iPhone (via Image Capture) to my Mac, where I put them into a folder, organize (delete a lot of videos and screen shots), then add them to my monthly folder of photos I take with my DSLR.
I was using Google Photos to sync everything from my phone, but that’s $20/year going to Google. No thanks.
And now that I’m not backing up photos via iCloud, my iPhone back ups are smaller, so I was able to downgrade to the .99¢ plan, which is just $12/year. Maybe I can look more into the back up stuff and whittle it down to the free plan at some point, but this is acceptable.