I started out pool mining, I think most Gridcoin miners do, I went solo after a few months of collecting the pool rewards.
I set up a Gridcoin wallet and transferred my pool earnings to it until I had enough balance to stake a reward within approximately 30 days then went solo.
BOINC research rewards do time out eventually, I think you have 6 months to stake before losing rewards so being part of a pool is a good way to build up an initial balance while the pool regularly stakes research rewards on your behalf.
If you already have other crypto-currency or want to invest $ then you can bypass the pool mining stage by purchasing GRC through a crypto-currency marketplace.
If you don't care about having BOINC credits in your own name then you could continue using the pool mining services for as long as it suit you.