Securely encrypting a cold storage wallet
Even if you seem worried about losing your coins, the safest way to store bitcoins is probably to acquire a hardware wallet. To mitigate the risk, you should store several copies of your wallet seed words in different locations. This is a form of backup that allows you to regenerate your wallet on another hardware wallet if you lose the first. It is highly recommended that you store the backups in a way that they are not easily accessible to other people that may use the backup to steal your coins. 

If you're going to invest significantly more than $1,000, the one-time cost of acquiring a hardware wallet at ~$100 seems a reasonable investment to me.