I've used openVPN for this in the past. It's nice because you only have to secure one point of access, and than you have all of your local devices easily accessible. It also allows you to tunnel through your home if you're on an insecure network, which is nice

Yea I was thinking something like that. At first I thought SSH would be plenty secure on its own, but then I thought what if I'm devving and want to see the server page? Or maybe a DB hosted on the machine? Etc etc.

Though I think I'd use Wireguard, but still. Some type of easy to manage VPN, with a Dynamic IP domain thing.

Any recommendations on the dynamic domain? Self hosting something might be neat

I don't bother with dynamic DNS- my home IP has never changed, and if it does change- I don't host anything where some downtime would matter much.

But this site has been recommended to me before- https://freedns.afraid.org/

My concern with the IP changing is if I was on vacation and my IP changes, I'd have no clue how to get back to it.

I use a dynamic DNS service for safety, but my IP address has literally never changed yet.

What makes the (lack of a) dynamic DNS a safety issue?

By "safety" I mean the ability to reach my machines even if the external IP address changes.