Originally Posted by
Flyer737
Never, ever use your email password for any other purpose since it is usually a common thread to everything else. For example, if somebody hacks into a web merchant account and gets your email address, it would be very bad if that website password allowed them to log into your email account as well. Then they could do a lot of damage.
This is very important as most websites use your email to verify your identity for password resets.
My personal strategy is to have a financial password, then another password I use for other sites (non-critical), and finally my email password. It's not at all idea but it's better than using the same password for everything.
The problem with using one of the solutions like 1password is if you are using a variety of random computers (say you are travelling) or you use computers you can't install software onto. Then it just becomes a huge hassle.