you can do a slack live w/persistence and customize it to your liking as well, before or after you create it and put it onto a USB Stick, and it has encryption capabilities.

Given the OP posted in "Linux-newbie", I think it's safe to assume Slackware/Arch/Gentoo would not be in his/her best interest. Likely to confuse and frustrate..

Otherwise I'd have recommended it myself.. but recommendations should at least make sense from the OP's context. I shan't be "evangelizing" just for the sake of it.

@OriginalPoster:

His suggestion is valid yet easily considered "overly complex" for your use case. Stick with something simple for now. If you learn more about Linux to the point you feel you can reasonably critique some decisions made by the more "beginner friendly" systems, check out Slackware.

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just giving an option, and what is wrong with learning. OP got a learn how to do all of the other steps just to get what s/he wants. Might as well keep learning. as I do not have a different Linux distro installed, I could not see if that script works on non slack boxes.
Q: if a desktop is called a Linux Box, then what would a laptop that has Linux on it be called? because it is smaller. crate maybe.

Helping someone learn is one thing.. inferring that a much less beginner friendly distro should be used without any kind of forewarning.. seems rather problematic. If they take your paragraph from a Windows/Mac perspective they will assume it's all just point and click, easy to use.

If they then try it and see that it isn't, they're likely to be left feeling frustrated, and/or confused enough to give up. I don't think that's the best approach... if you make a suggestion, make it well rounded enough that people (OP or other random newbies looking at the post), will have an idea as to whether it's actually a viable option for them.

I know it's the oldschool attitude to drop a one liner and walk away so that it forces people to go "RTFM", but that isn't likely to help make people feel like it's a "good community". Don't think that's an impression anyone wants to leave here..

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I suggest what I suggested, then as suggestions goes, it is then up to the receiver what to do with same said suggestion. period.
Just because someone says they are a noobie one should not take that as meaning they are an idiot incapable of learning something.

Slack Live works better as a persistent usb than anything I have tried over the years and it was a simple process to install. It's well documented but in order to install it, you need to be not only able, but willing to read as any one who has installed Slackware knows. The OP seems to meet those requirements. If using or wanting to try one of the Ubuntu systems, I would highly recommend mkusb.

Based on the requirements in the initial post, doing an actual install seems to be what the OP wants and what would work. Depends on the size of the drive. If it's large enough, there could be any number of full installs on the usb.

to add to this. Now that I think about it. This is something I figured out, then wrote up in Void Linux wiki, back when I was using Void Linux and tried this method using Slackware as OS when doing it, and it worked too. just had to install the xtools of theirs onto Slack. POSX

Install Void Linux onto a USB Stick

it is just one more option.