If others here have experimented with "parallel VPN" as mentioned above any thoughts to pass along would be appreciated.
Using a VPN for privacy is in most cases a bad idea.
Depending on the country you live in, it rather harms your privacy, since you are shifting the trust from your ISP towards the VPN provider.
You just have to estimate who you trust more with your data, your ISP or a VPN provider.
If you are not living in a legal vacuum (and not in the USA), the ISP most likely is the safer bet. You need to acknowledge that VPN provider make money with your data. And not only the free ones.
Additionally, a compromised tor exit node does not automatically mean that you are being tracked. This is a misconception some user on this forum have.
A compromised exit nodes enables attacks to track people via HTTP, but does not mean that you privacy is automatically compromised.