You are asking; I am answering. There's no arguing, here.
If you don't like what I'm saying, then stop reading. If you want to convince me to stop making PCB's, I'm all ears.
I order boards, too. They can be very inexpensive, but it's usually at least 15-20.00. Add another 20, if you want 3 day shipping.
To come clean, here, most of my homemade boards are not anywhere as complex as this example. More often, I am using toner transfer to make adaptors, breakout boards, and for testing new circuitry/components with fairly simple single sided boards just to add some support circuitry and pin headers to an IC footprint. For this kind of thing it is rare that any copy beyond the first one has any value to me, whatsoever. So that 15 to 20 bucks is not insane, but for a single breakout board that ISn't going to arrive in two days? Maybe I'm cheapskate, but that's not great to me.
I might use another one in a year or 10 (not likely), but that's only if I can find it. If I make my own, I just have to find a file on my computer. An analogy is how I deal with my component storage. It's not fast and sleek. It's very compact and secure, but it takes time to find things and to get the parts out. No ziplock baggies, no slide out compartments. I just seal the components up with a heat sealer. I have to cut the bag open and dot it closed again with my iron. But the idea is to store more things, securely, in less space. The "ease of use" is secondary. Ordering boards is like opening the package and taking out ten. Then having no way to put the genie back in the bottle. Now the extra boards are my problem. That one use cost 20-30 dollars. I can't count the number of professionally manufactured PCBs I have thrown away. The $2 per way of thinking is nonsense. When I order 10 pcb, I often thrown 8 or 9 of them away without populating them. Hopefully sooner, rather than later. My workspace thanks me. On work related proto, maybe 3 sets of boards ever gets used, depending on how many parties need a copy. This is just for the electrical verification and housing. If there are failure rate/assembly issues to work out and streamline, it is gonna take more than 10 copies and usually requires the professionally populated first run. So the extra proto boards are usually as useful as a second dick.*
Making boards is not for everyone. But I think it' a lot easier than many people think. Toner transfer can be 100% reliable and has good enough resolution for most double-sided non BGA things.
*One of the few things I have repeatedly reached for and use up are little DC boost circuit PCBs. This is also, not coincidentally, a pre-populated "component-on-PCB" that you can buy from component distributors. There are probably a few other good examples, but I don't have any for what I do. Maybe Arduino's and stuff like that. RS232 adapters. I dunno. I mean, if it's a board you are gonna find useful again and again, someone probably makes and sells it cheaper than you can.