Why are you paying per year? You can get lifetime adguard licenses for cheap from stack social.

Discord is the best place for help for actual budget, it is very active

Reolink is a Chinese company with probably the same policy as Anker. I have a Reolink camera but it is blocked from accessing the internet and records locally. I would never recommend them for a system set up like you want, only if you are going to manage your own recordings. Amcrest also makes better cameras in my opinion if you want random Chinese stuff.

Cameras and privacy don’t really go hand in hand. The only commercial product/service I trust is HomeKit secure video. It is all end to end encrypted and you can hook the available cameras directly up to it. But it comes as a cost of about $10 a month and pricey cameras with only motion recording.

The ultimate setup is something like surveillance station or blue iris. Cameras are cheap because you can use the random Chinese stuff, you just block them from accessing the internet to phone home. But this leaves you only being able to access your cameras/recordings when you are on your LAN so you have to setup a VPN to view them while you’re away.

Yup, HomeKit can 100% work without internet. It’s a requirement of being HomeKit certified. I block internet access to all my HomeKit devices and they work just fine.