DAE almost drown their first pothos and save it with a chopstick?

Two months ago I noticed my pothos on the kitchen sill in Boise was dropping yellow leaves fast, and I panicked because I'd been watering it every three days like clockwork. I pulled it out of the pot and found the bottom third of the soil was basically swamp, so the roots had started to rot. I clipped off the brown roots with clean scissors, let it dry out for two days, then poked a chopstick down to the bottom of the pot before every watering to check if it was still damp. Six weeks later it's pushing out two new leaves and the chopstick trick has saved me from overwatering my other plants too. How do you all check soil moisture without spending money on a meter?