I don't know that spending 2k on a NAS is going to do me any good as the NAS is not a replacement for backups.

This is very true but a NAS still has its place. Using RAID-1 (simple mirroring) protects against any potential catastrophic failure of hardware but does nothing to protect you from a ransomware attack or stupidly deleting the wrong folders. So there is a point to having a NAS but it's not 100% solution on its own.

Relying on cloud storage for backup has its own set of problems. Cost of service, extra charges for retrieving your data when needed, and the extreme time it takes to transfer anything. Depending on the volume of data, it could take weeks to download everything back to your location. Add to that the loss of privacy and the potential for any given provider to go out of business or change their business model with total disregard for their customers and it's not really the best backup solution.

IMHO the way around these limitations is to have a NAS with RAID-1 (for problem set #1) and set up a second NAS either on site or remote and send periodic backups to it using whatever intervals make sense for your case. I do this with my Synology NAS as my primary and an older Terramaster NAS that receives the backups via Rsync. I have total control over what gets backed up and when, and in the event of a total loss of the primary NAS the other one is still available to rebuild from.