I suppose I'm the cat with the painted stripe at a skunk party. I love my Iphone. Movies, Pictures to record my life, apps for productivity such as keeping track of my health, writing, idea's, watching my poor banking accounts to the last dollar. I listen to the latest music or my favorite songs from days long gone (I love Sade) and can upload it to my phone. CD's? That is soooo last century. Now my music is piped from my phone through my car stereo. Who needs a map or a GPS when your phone can do the same thing? You will never get lost again. (Unless it's really foggy and you were in the wrong lane. Long story.) During Christmas when the family gets together, my two nieces, their daughters, my nephew in law and Sweetheart all use Iphones and can send and receive data from each other. My sister always has the latest Iphone, I typically am one behind. They are on Iphone 7. I have the 6. The galaxy's feel too flimsy for me though I do envy the slightly bigger screen. The more you use it, the more things you can use it for. You may scrunch at the initial cost but electronics is one those things that you get what you pay for. The thing I hated the most about cellphones was the battery life was ridiculous. It always ran out and at the worst possible time. The new smartphones have as good or better battery life than your laptop, charge faster and are just plain handier but I can only reference Iphone and the galaxy in this. I don't know just how good other off name brands really are...but the kids are pretty bright about this. There is a reason why you can't separate a millennial from their phone. I know some may balk at the smartphone craze but learn from the young. If our parents didn't learn from us, we'd still be using 8 Track tapes. I hated that KA-THUNK right in the middle of a song. Didn't you?
To the problem at hand. Temp Passwords for mail are sent via text or your old mail. If it is asking for your old password first, you might be SOL. Another option is You might see if you used your passwords on another device such as a laptop or your desktop system. If you used Mozilla or Chrome and told it to save your password, you can look it up. If you used either and saved that password on your current computer, you should be able to look it up. If you use Explorer and told it to save your password...I'm not so sure you can easily find it. That's how I found a password that we thought was lost. Last I heard, Yahoo support will NOT give your old password. They will make you create a new account which is awful. Just awful. You lose all of your contacts and correspondence.
As for not writing down passwords, you can use that old computer that isn't hooked to the net to store them electronically or you can go old school and write it in that little black book. A little black book is almost Unhackable. Record the entire password. Don't mess around with clues. This is access to your life.