I shoot for the best possible exposure all the time. I don't believe in shooting over or under intentionally.
I do a lot (crapload) of little league sports action. I'll come away from the ball fields after an evening of games with literally thousands of images. Once I'm back to the office, I turn them so their orientation is correct and then remove about 1/2 of the images simply because the shots are repetitive, or for one reason or another I don't believe the image will sell. Then I upload to my web site and sell them.
If I had to post produce each image, I would have to price myself completely out of the market or put a bullet in my head to make it all stop.
I say, learn your camera. Pay attention to the lighting. Do less after the fact. Who do you think you are? Ansel Adams? 
Just my own personal rant about photographers who rely on tinkering after the fact instead of taking the image they want when they open the shutter.
Caveat: There are occaisions when tinkering in post is necessary. I'm just saying, try to learn to need it as little as humanly possible and you will be a better photographer.
You misunderstand me, I'm not talking about overexposing. The idea is just to keep most of the peaks towards the rights on the histogram (not off it), as the farther left they are the more noise you get. This is critical for some situations I shoot, like at an indoor rodeo. I can't get close enough to use a flashgun, (the dust in the air just makes haze) and they won't let me set up a remote light in the arena. So I end up shooting at ISO 1600, and if I can keep the histogram peaks more to the right side, I end up with much less noise in the images.
Like you say learn your camera, the +.3 or +.5 exposure compensation gets the exposure usually right on my cameras center-weighted meter. If I'm using spot meter, it's usually dead on without any compensation.
As for post processing, I try to do as little as possible as well. It depends on the situation though, for hobby photography (what the OP is talking about, and is landscapes and wildlife for me) I will spend a bit more time in post striving for perfection just cause I can.
However I do sports (for $$) as well, and I do very little post with them like you mentioned. I still shoot RAW though, I scan through them in LR, throw out the rejects, then usually use a sharpening preset, contrast preset, and a color preset (depends on the lens) (and maybe a noise filter depending on the ISO) on the whole lot. I shoot a youth rodeo last weekend, came back with about 500 pictures, parred that down to nearer 400, and it took me all of 20 minutes to process them, then I just click export and walk away while LR makes the JPEGs, and uploads them to my site.
I also do the occasional wedding, or family event, and for those I
DO take more time in post, I don't neccesarily change much, I just want to make sure everyone is as good as it can be . I'm very much a perfectionist when it comes to family pictures that people pay me good money for, and will be hanging on their wall for years to come.
