Passwords are a necessary evil, and I've written before about how to make them more secure - the basic rules are

• don't to tell anyone what they are,
• use words and numbers together,
• don't write them down (really - never do it) and
• have two sorts of regularly used passwords - a complex one for important sites (banking, tax, money generally) and another simple one for general, non-fiscal use.

DON'T use one of the top ten passwords that PC Magazine claim are the most commonly used.  I don't know how they found out, because you are not supposed to admit what your password is to anyone, but here they are:

password
123456
qwerty
abc123
letmein
monkey
myspace 1
password 1
blink182
(your first name)

If you are using any of those I recommend you change.