Ideally, I'd like to back up my data too. That's where it becomes much harder: I need a second location. (In case my house catches fire, or floods in a hurricane, etc.)

AWS and GCE both provide raw disk space, and certainly, an encrypted backup could be uploaded to them. I would like to be able to put a cap on what I spend on service, in case something goes wrong with the system, which AFAIK, neither GCE/AWS provide, unfortunately.

I would also like it to be remotely accessible, which a simple terabyte drive doesn't get directly.

Now, most of the above (creating a backup, encrypting it, shipping it out to AWS/GCE, securely accessing a drive remotely) are all possible, but none are easy, and certainly not yet at the level of "my mother/father can do it".

I try very hard to maintain a private "cloud", and I find it fairly difficult.