Bitcoin wallets can be 10 times more safe than Bank accounts. Goverments are known to confiscate money if you don't pay your taxes and banks are also known for bankruptcy in which case you say bye bye to your money. On the other hand you can have a hardware wallet and keep your coins in the safest place 
hardware wallets are just an optional tool. you don't need them in order to securely store your coins for the long term. all it does is adding extra costs while storing your wallet files in usb drives and/or printing out your private keys is free. with free i mean free in the way that people already have a printer and usb drives at home. that's how i store my coins.
need what? hardware wallets? if that's what you mean, then no. as i said before, it's just an optional thing. if i take myself as an example, my wallet files are all secured with a lengthy passphrase. even if my pc gets infected with a virus, and the hacker got my wallet file, then still nothing will happen. it's practically impossible to brute force it within a reasonable time frame (if ever).