As a geek, I’ve helped my family and friends with their computers for decades. During this time, I got to see how they deal with passwords:

• Some have their passwords stored in a password-manager app. (But what if your phone/computer breaks or gets stolen?!)
• Some wrote their passwords on paper. (But what if the paper is misplaced, damaged by a fire, stolen, or eaten by a pet?!)
• Some used one password for everything. (This is a BIG no-no! Once a hacker or even anyone gets a hold of your password, they are going to try it out on many websites, including your bank’s website.)

I get it. These days, we join a lot of apps and websites. It’s annoying trying to create and remember a zillion passwords. I know all too well how it can be dizzying and frustrating.

So what do you do? I’ve got password creation and memorizing down into an art. It’s really just simple mnemonics at play. Remember the mathematical order? PEMDAS, Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally? (Instead of “Dear”, I used “Deaf”. But I digress.)

I developed this method for myself and it’s helped me remember at least 95% of my two-dozens-or-so passwords. (The 5% is usually because the password was created by a family member or a friend.)

I’ll use examples. Let’s say you’re a Starbucks addict (like me! I love their green iced tea) and you want to open an account on Starbucks’ website or app. Let’s come up with a password that’s easy to create and remember.

Choose two words that will immediately make you think of Starbucks. Let’s say you once dropped and spilled a $50.00 Venti Latte that had over 50 shots of espresso. Yikes. Hard to forget that, right? Okay, so you made a fifty dollars’ worth of puddle. FiftyPuddle.

Reverse the first letters of each word. PiftyFuddle. Yay! Such a fun password to remember already.

We’re not done yet, though. Most if not all websites require passwords that are 8 or more characters with upper and lower cases, has at least a number, and a special character.

You can make your own rule. For example, always convert i to 1, e to 3, o to 0, and so on. In this example, we’ll convert i to 1. So, P1ftyFuddle. You can make the e into an 3 if you’re daring enough, but if you want to KISS (keep it simple, silly), then just the i into 1 should suffice.

Special character? Easy, just slap an ! or any of your favorite characters— @, #, %, etc.— to the end of the password. Or at the beginning, if you prefer.

And there you go! “P1ftyFuddle!”.

Some people insist on remembering just one main password for each website. I absolutely do not recommend it, but here’s how you can do that safely. Come up with two “forever” keywords. They need to be two random words that even your family and friends can’t guess. Let’s say everyone knows you like the color blue but they don’t know that your favorite blue is Robin Blue. And you fondly recall having a huge secret crush on a kid named Muffy. So, RobinMuffy. Reverse the first letters of the words: MobinRuffy.

Then you can add different numbers to the password for each website. Let’s use the first letter of each website. In the above Starbucks case, you want to know what place number the “S” is. Hold out your hands and fingers. Go a, b, c… from left to right, then repeat from left to right until you reach the desired letter. The “S” is on the 9th finger. So, PiftyFuddle09!, PiftyFuddle9!, 9PiftyFuddle!, Pifty9Fuddle!, whichever is easy for you to remember.

For the “forever” keywords, it would be MobinRuffy09! for the Starbucks account and MobinRuffy44! for the Dunkin Donuts account, and so forth.

Tip: Just make sure that whatever password you created cannot be found in the dictionary. Most hackers use bots that can guess a password based on the dictionary. Avoid bad passwords like “CattyFatty10!” or “CoughRat@47″.

Gosh, I could go on and on, but you get the idea. Just make your own rules and really stick with them. It does take some getting used to but I’m sure with some perseverance, you’ll get the hang of it and amaze yourself at how you can easily create and remember your passwords!

Now, if I could remember my password for the OnlyFans site… hah, just kidding!

—Tabby

Bonus tip: If you absolutely must write or type down your password, then do so as hints, not complete passwords. For the Starbucks password, you would write down something like “Starbucks – expensive spill”. For the ‘forever keywords’ password, write down “Starbucks – blue, crush”. Your brain will (hopefully) associate them and the password will magically pop up in your head!