3: Have 3 copies of your data
2: On at least 2 devices
1: 1 of which is off-line
Back-ups are something that we can fall back on in case of an "Oh shit!" situation. Whether your tax papers or music library are at stake, it is worth considering preserving that data. Think of a back-up as an insurance plan for your data. You probably have health insurance, so treat backups as your data insurance.
There are plenty of cloud services that, for a pretty low cost, will store your data. But I do not use cloud services or encrypt data with a strong algorithm before uploading to one of said services.
It would be a lot more practical to purchase a Synology file server and keep it on a network. Provided you have configured and secured it correctly, it will keep your data safe when your laptop's hard drive dies.
Your most important files ideally should have many copies of different update frequencies. That is insurance for your insurance.
This might sound stupid, but do consider frequently attempting to recover data from the backups you just made. It only takes minutes and can be automated in some cases. You will be glad you caught an issue before it became a big problem.
The most important file for me is my KeePassXC database. It is kept on both of my laptops, my Sony phone, my NAS and a hard drive. That is at least five copies. My NAS makes daily snapshots at 3:00 UTC every day and uploads the changes to another Synology in my parents apartment. In addition, I have a hard drive in a bank vault in the case things go really wrong. Either way, you need to group your data into a few categories and evaluate the importance of each category and develop a back-up plan for it. Here's mine:
Source code: Stored on Gitea in the server with a copy on all of my computers.
Family photos: Shared between family members, my father has a iCloud backup, I have a NAS.
Tax paperwork: Stored on NAS, encrypted backup on Proton and a copy on a hard drive in bank vault.
Music: kept on Eye2X.org server and every computer, plus a USB drive.
Rare files: Stored on NAS and Eye2X.org server, backup on the bank vault hard drive.