Purpose of a hardware wallet?

Sorry if this sounds like a stupid question. I want to take some btc off the exchange and I'm doing my research. I don't have a lot (less than 1000 dollars) but I'm not planning on touching these coins for a long time (basically until I retire) and to keep them safe I'm not sure if I should buy a hardware wallet.

The thing I don't understand is even if you have a hardware wallet, you still need a backup of that. Because if anything happens to that hardware wallet (hardware malfunction, gets lost, house burns down, forget your code) then you're still screwed.

So if you still need to write your pass phrase down on a piece of paper or in an USB key, why even have the hardware wallet? The hardware wallet isn't going to make those backup methods any safer and isn't that just one more thing that can be compromised?