You are right. The price of hardware wallets is on the expensive side, it will keep many away from them. If you plan to hold and keep investing in Crypto currencies for a long time, i would still recommend it, because of the added security in your investment. You may buy $100 worth of Bitcoin today, but what if you hold it for a long time and then is worth $1,000? Or more. Paper wallets are useful in that you can keep storing your coins there but remember two things: 1) You can only add coins to your paper wallet so you won't be able to use it for say daily transactions. 2) It is a piece of paper and you have to make sure you keep it safe somewhere. Fire, water damage could destroy it easily, so you may want to have more than one copy or make sure you have your address and private key backup somewhere safe. Cheers.