One of the main concerns people raise when you tell them about hardware wallets, is trusting so much money into a USB stick that can be easily lost, damaged, or even bug out.

Luckily, the designers of hardware wallets have thought through that problem, and created recovery phrases. Recovery phrases are a series of 24-32 random words that you write down and store securely, so that in the event that your wallet becomes damaged, your recovery phrase can be used to restore the contents of your wallet onto a new device.

When this is combined with the difficulty of a stranger breaking into your hardware wallet, it actually makes hardware wallets way more secure than a regular wallet with cash and credit cards. If someone steals your normal wallet, they can spend your cash, and start racking up small purchases on your credit card using tap. If they somehow stole your PIN, they can make much larger purchases. You then need to fight with the credit card company to denounce those fraudulent purchases.

With a hardware wallet, someone finds it, and likely fails to crack into it. Meanwhile, you purchase a new one and restore the contents like nothing ever happened. Or you have a spare one ready to be restored immediately.