Doesn't take more than 2 minutes to configure. You can definitely look at the tld list or something similar to find domains with cheap renewals but be careful about some of the registrars listed there.
That's why I said they are good for self-hosting. Mostly for you and your family, you can change the tld every year without much effort.
You can look at porkbun or namecheap, they usually give out a good domain for about a dollar for a year. Good for self-hosting stuff.
I got some .xyz .site etc tlds for a dollad.
Idk if cloudflare provided you with an option for privacy protection on your domain but looks like you didn't get that. Most good domain registrar provides that option for free. At this point you can't do much about it since your phone number is already out. But you can ask cloudflare support if it's possible to add it now, so that people in the future can't get your personal information from whois.
Also, next time look into porkbun or namecheap. They are pretty good, cheap and provides whois protection for free.
Good question, anyone who've personally used Actual Budgeting and Firefly III. Can you let me know your thoughts on them? Which one do you prefer and why?
Is your public ip dynamic or static? Does your domain point to your proper public ip? Do you have ports 80 and/or 443 open to the public? Does your reverse proxy listen to your publicip:80 and 443? Is your connection under a CGNAT?
You leave a lot of questions unanswered. Just stating 'it doesn't work' doesn't help to troubleshoot.
+1 for Joplin notes. You can also self-host a sync server.
How exactly do you plan to use a reverse proxy without a domain name? By it's very nature, a reverse proxy by default works with a domain/subdomain name.
I'd suggest you look up some docs/tutorials about DNS, Web server, Reverse Proxy etc. Looks like you got no clue on what you're doing.
+1 for proxmox. He can also run a Hackintosh VM reliably since he got an AMD GPU.