Disclaimer: I’m not going into technical detail, yes there are more secure ways to approach this, but this is by far the easiest/most secure way for 99% of people.
Short version: Use a phrase, including spaces if it will let you.
Longer version: Most sites will force you to use a number and special character, I recommend changing the first letter that has an easy comparison and adding a special character on the end.
Example of this:
But using 3 instead of e is really obvious! It is but that doesn’t matter, why? Most account takeovers happen one of two ways:
You solve number 1 by using unique passwords and number 2 by making the unique password long. Research has shown it’s best to use a phrase to achieve length and make it easy to remember over random characters. What you’re accomplishing with using numbers/special characters is satisfying the websites requirement and not increasing security.
You’ll need two unique passwords:
*If you can, add two factor authentication these accounts as well
Your email is the gateway to almost every account you’ll use and where you’ll receives reset emails, so it is important to keep this separate. The rest of your accounts passwords should be stored in a password manager.
The major browsers (Chrome, Edge, Firefox) all have password managers built-in to them, they all sync across your devices as well. So if you use Firefox on your computer, use the Firefox app on your phone.
How to access each browser’s password manager: