If you’re just worried about people you live with and passive scan type stuff I’d do a LUKS flash drive and a txt file. If you are worried about more active stuff from 3 letters then I still think digital is going to be the best bet, but you’d better use qubes or even dedicate an airgapped computer with an encrypted drive but even that is iffy for a serious anti gov threat model.
I use airvpn with an always on server setup, port forwarding, and constant seeding. If you’re okay with manually using a wireguard or openvpn client instead of an airvpn specific client it works great.
Edit Plus, they have a progressive pricing thing that lets you buy a few days for like 2€ just to test stuff.