Hi everyone, I have an issue that might not be that big of a deal but I would like your insights or help.
I have an iPhone, iPad, and oldish MacBook Pro. I primarily use my iPhone and iPad. I take a lot of photos and videos and purchased the 200gb iCloud storage option a couple years ago. I decided, since I use my iPad and iPhone all the time, that I would migrate all my files up to iCloud. I now use the Files App as though it’s my finder window! Last week, I hit 200gb (primarily photos and videos). I decided to get the next tier, 2TB (I share this with my spouse- he uses about 75gb and doesn’t take many photos or videos). I feel locked in now, more so than before, with $10 per month to Apple.
Am I a fool? Should I just offload my old photos onto a a couple duplicate thumb drives?
The files are easy enough to move. I use OneDrive that comes with my Office365 subscription (1TB), but have a small 50GB sub with iCloud for my iPhone photos, even though I back up to Google Photos and OneDrive too. $10 for 2TB isn’t bad.
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This may sound absurd, but I would burn them to DVDs, or transfer to external drives you then e.g. Backblaze (remote/off-site back-up) through your Mac. iCloud you could use only for those photos to which you want to maintain ready access (presuming that’s a fraction of your full archive). I agree with @Pommster that it’s honestly not much to fuss over given the value for the amount of storage.
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Multiple media, multiple locations is always the best advice. It would take a lot of DVD’s (unless I have my math wrong) but a couple of external USB drives are pretty cheap.
I always have backups in the drawer, and another set a coupe of weeks old off site (at work) and swap them around every couple of weeks.
I always worry about the day when I lose access to my Gmail or iCloud account because of a hack or claim of violating terms of service,etc…
Getting back in can be difficult or impossible.
If you have local storage such as a NAS, that is a perfect backup medium.
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Thank you, everyone! I appreciate the comments. 
Perhaps too little too late, but do you get $10 of value out of the service? My inkling would be “yes.” I have the 200GB plan myself (for 2 of us). Although I think Apple’s cloud storage costs more than it should, it does provide a level of value and convenience…
Incidentally, I noticed that Files now supports Sync.com, a relatively secure cloud provider (according to Steve Gibson). Their monthly plans are $5/1TB, $8/4TB $15/10TB “per user”. May be tough to find plans that let you share space between users in the way Apple does.
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Hey, thank you for this! Those prices are nice. I’ll check them out.