Yeah I mean I get it because I was also thinking about self hosting for a long time and had a bunch of questions myself.
The problem is that a lot of the questions were not needed, and a bunch of the other questions I answered myself by just tooling around with the stuff.
Great comment btw, it's a good idea to have a list of the services you'd like to run, in order of importance z then work through it.
I did that then found ways to combine a bunch of services, to the point where I had multiple stand alone VMs that are now just one for Home Assistant and second for Plex and Docker
I had a friend at work who said "People who pirate stuff are just as bad as burglers" to me. I had just been Burgled 2 weeks before Christmas.
I replied "Right so I'm as bad as the smack heads that robbed my kids presents, is that what you're saying?"
He did that thing folk do when they look like a fish breathing then tried to backtrack, but that's when he became a "work colleague" again.