You CAN write down your password.

I have established a way to write down your passwords. More importantly, it isn’t complicated, and if someone steals the paper it doesn’t mean they stole everything! The format of the password is broken down into three simple steps – once we go over them we will go over how to write them down!

1.       Pick a random set of numbers and/or characters.

a.       This can be a birthday, initials with a wedding anniversary, or any combination of letters and numbers that will be easy for you to remember.

b.       For our example, we will use April 15th, 1998 or 041598

2.       Pick your favorite special character!

a.       I recommend one on top of the keyboard as they are more commonly accepted than any others, but you do you!

b.       For our example, we will use %

3.       Say what the password is for!

a.       This one is also easy and entirely up to you on how it looks. Is it a Facebook account, Bank account, work login, etc? Just say what the password is for and remove all the spaces

b.       For our example, we will use CreditUnionBankAccount

That is it! You have a password! Just put it all together and you have an incredibly secure, easy to remember, password. For our example, 041598%CreditUnionBankAccount. Feel free to jumble it up too! CreditUnionBankAccount041598% is just fine as well.

Wait what about writing it down?

That is the beauty of the system. Here we go!

In step 1 we came up with the 041598. This is something that you write down and put in your wallet, a PostIt on your monitor, or simply memorize. Since it is important to you it should be easy not to reference this every time you have to enter the password.

Step 2 is the only NEW thing you need to memorize. What special character did you use? If you need to then feel free to write it down as well. Maybe on the PostIt, we mentioned in step 1?

With step 3 we came up with the long part of our password. This is the one you will most likely want to keep with you on paper whenever you go out. I encourage this format because it is straightforward and does not give away its overall meaning.

It is that simple. The first column is the name of the company or website the password is for. The second column is the information from step 3. So there you have it. You can write down your password and even someone stealing the paper won’t do them much good.