I got a lifetime subscription to keepsolid VPN a few years ago £12 for up to 5 devices, figured if I got a year out of it then that’s my money back, still going great now for me. Occasionally they do these lifetime subscription options for bargain price on stacksocial which is where I got mine. Worth keeping an eye out. There are better featured ones out there but all I want is something to funnel my Torrents and indexers through and this works fine on 150mb broadband I have with no speed drop.
Don’t cheap out on a NAS, I got an entry level Synology when I first started it was great for learning but was quite slow. I needed to sell that and buy a more powerful model to get one that could run Docker. I went for 716+ which I bought used off eBay and works well for me, the difference in speed is night and day. Ram can be upgraded onboard if required. Good luck 👍