Identity management

Taking a break from the world of stocks for a moment, I think it is important to have a good handle on identity management. In these days, everyone has a ton of accounts - banks, email providers, social media, retirement accounts, college accounts and shopping accounts. No matter what encryption format is used, it is all ultimately crackable. And the point is not to make it hard for the thieves, it is to make it easy on yourself. Try what works best for you, maybe write it in your own diary and hide it under your carpet. Learn Indian or Native American languages such as Navajo or Sanskrit - you get the drift -- old obsolete languages that no one remembers or teaches and write them down and then of course put them in your desktop or front room as there are few chances any one will be able to crack these codes in first place. 

There are a lot of online password protection tools .. where you put in a catch phrase and not password that you might only know .. something deeply personal such as you going to this music band and dancing to this song. Based on this  catch phrase then you can unlock all other passwords for various sites. I do a combination of such things and also use one encryption and phrase password tool like TrueCrypt or many such free and open source solutions. It is not a bad idea to invest in this or pay few dollars every month if that leads to some peace of mind.

I also put tax forms and statements in this. I usually compare Turbo Tax, Tax Slayer, local state government websites which often allow you to file for free, That is another good practice and you get to see various codes and get a picture on how different softwares are working your income and expenses. I then take the one with the maximum refund to file.