Backing up one’s home directory with tar

This is something that should be fairly easy. However in practice there are some problems:

1. Tar has a proliferation of options and can be an effort to use – at least if you are using it infrequently
2. One’s home directory often contains large files (like perfectly legally downloaded music and videos), which you don’t really want to back up repeatedly.
3. Some applications put rather large things in hidden directories under your home directory

There are various solutions: