In most households the passwords live in one person's head, on sticky notes, and in a long trail of text messages. It works until that person is travelling, or ill, or a phone is lost. A family password manager fixes this in an evening, and the hardest part is getting everyone to sit down at the same time.
What you are aiming for
- Every adult and teenager has their own private vault that nobody else can see.
- There are shared vaults for the things the household really does share.
- Two adults can get back in and help the others if someone is locked out.
- In an emergency, the right person can reach the accounts that keep the household running.
We use 1Password for this, and the steps below follow its family plan, which covers five people. Other family password managers work along the same lines.
Step 1: one adult sets up the family account
Pick the most organized adult, not necessarily the most technical one. They create the account and choose a master password.
Make it a passphrase of four or five unrelated words. It needs to be long, and it needs to be something you can type on a phone without swearing.
At sign-up, 1Password gives you an Emergency Kit, a one-page document containing your account details and a Secret Key. Print it. Write the master password on it by hand, and put it wherever you keep passports and birth certificates. This sheet of paper is how you get back in if everything else fails. It is not a security risk in a drawer at home. The people who want your passwords are not going to search your house.
Step 2: make a second adult an organizer
Invite your partner, or another adult you trust, and make them a family organizer too. Organizers can help a family member who has forgotten their master password to recover their account. With only one organizer, there is nobody to rescue the organizer.
Step 3: invite everyone else
Each person gets an invitation by email, creates their own master password, and prints their own Emergency Kit. For younger teenagers, a parent can keep the kit.
Tell everyone the rule that makes it work: what is in your private vault is yours. Parents cannot see it, and neither can siblings. Teenagers take to a password manager much more readily once they believe that.
Step 4: set up the shared vaults
Start with a few, and name them so that nobody has to think:
- Household: streaming services, the Wi-Fi password, utilities, the internet provider, the alarm code, grocery and delivery accounts
- Money: joint bank accounts, the mortgage or landlord portal, insurance, tax software. Share this one between the adults only.
- Kids and school: school portals, the pediatrician, sports clubs, game and app accounts that parents manage
A sign-in belongs in a shared vault if more than one person ever needs it. Everything else stays private.
Step 5: put in more than passwords
This is where a family gets the most value. Add the things somebody always needs when they are away from the filing cabinet:
- Passport, driving licence and health insurance details
- The numbers to call if a bank card is lost
- Car registration, and the breakdown service membership
- Software licence keys
- Medical information that a babysitter or a grandparent might need
- The recovery codes for two-step sign-in on your important accounts
Step 6: install it everywhere
Put the app on every phone and computer, and add the browser extension so that it offers to fill in and save passwords by itself. Turn on fingerprint or face unlock on phones. A manager that is awkward to open will not be used.
Then switch off the browser's own password saving, or the two will compete, and half the passwords will end up in the wrong place.
Step 7: fix the important passwords first
Do not try to change a hundred passwords in one night. In the first week, change these to new, generated passwords and turn on two-step sign-in for each: email accounts, banks, and your Apple, Google or Microsoft account. Let the manager collect the rest as people sign in to things. After a month, open Watchtower and work down the list of weak and reused passwords, the important ones first.
Plan for the emergency
It is not a cheerful subject, but it is the one that matters most. Make sure both organizers know where the printed Emergency Kits are kept. If there is someone outside the household who would deal with your affairs, tell them where that paper is as well, or leave a note with your will.
Common worries
"What if the company is broken into?" Your vaults are encrypted on your own devices before they are stored, with a key made from your master password and your Secret Key. The company does not hold what is needed to read them.
"What if I forget my master password?" That is what the second organizer and the printed kit are for. Set up both, and test the recovery once while nothing is wrong.
"My teenager will not use it." Put the Wi-Fi password and the streaming accounts in the Household vault, and stop answering texts that ask for them. It tends to work within the week.