Tailscale, ZeroTier, Tinc, Hamachi, and the like are all very, stupidly easy mesh VPN solutions that anyone can use. If you feel like owning a domain, Cloudflare Tunnel makes it similarly easy to expose your service to the wider Internet on a home connection and not have to worry about proxies and certs. The barrier to self hosting has never been lower, and it keeps falling. Heck, Cockpit's Podman management means you almost never need to look at a terminal, and aren't locked in to a bespoke platform that's rainbows and glitter until it stops getting maintained or gets enshittified. Get a little SBC with as much RAM as you can find and you'll be amazed at the capability:effort ratio.