You could use a bot service to fill in the gaps where you cannot pay yourself.
Splintermate is very cheap, so the rewards outweigh the cost easily. You can even set it to play until your ecr gets to 80-90% or so, so you still have plenty room to play games yourself.
Yeah, I have just found out about Splintermate and was thinking to try it out. It's on my to do list and check it, maybe for one of my alts at least if not for the main account.
You can ask for a free trial in their discord