What settings should I change on my Macbook Pro if I have limited data?

Because of my online teaching schedule and personal travel schedule, I recently picked up a Verizion Jetpack hotspot. I get 5 gigs a month, but want to make sure I don't exceed that. Theoretically, that shouldn't be a problem - most of the time I have high speed internet everywhere I go, but there are a number of places I don't.

I'm torn between just manually switching things on and off via settings and creating a new profile that has everything that might otherwise eat up bandwidth turned off and am looking for pros and cons of either.

If I wanted to turn things off manually, what should I turn off (and remember to turn back on afterwards) when using the hotspot as my primary data connection?

If I create a profile, what settings do I want to leave off in the profile to help limit my data use? I will need to be able to use my browser in the profile, but don't need notifications, software updates, etc. I'd prefer that the only data being used when I had the hotspot on is browser data.

Does this make sense?

Thanks in advance for any tips or ideas. I tried to use my google-fu, but it was poor on this topic.