How to retrieve Password from PSCredential in a .cred file - powershell

Question

I have two functions, Save Credential to create a .cred file:
$cred = New-Object -TypeName System.Management.Automation.PSCredential -ArgumentList ($Username, $PWord)
$cred.Password | Out-File "some\path\$($cred.Username).cred" -Force
and Get Credential to retrieve the password:
$string = Get-Content "some\path\$($Username).cred" | ConvertTo-SecureString
$cred = New-Object System.Management.Automation.PSCredential -ArgumentList $Username, $string
return $cred
I cannot for the life of me figure out how to retrieve the password from the .cred file that I created. The errors I get are:
ConvertTo-SecureString: Input String was not in the correct format
New-Object: Exception calling .actor with 2 arguments. Cannot process argument because the value of argument "password" is null. change the value of argument password to a non-null value

Answer 1

What version are you bound to? I might not be following properly, but it looks like you don't care about the whole credential and just want the password, so couldn't it just be:
#set
$pwd = "replace me"
$securepwd = $pwd | ConvertTo-SecureString -AsPlainText -Force
$encryptedpwd = $securepwd | ConvertFrom-SecureString
Out-File -FilePath C:\temp\Reference.cred -InputObject $encryptedpwd
then
#get
$securepwd = (Get-Content -Path C:\temp\Reference.cred) | ConvertTo-SecureString
#commented out 3 lines shows how to decrypt in case you want to view it/verify it, but isn't necessary
#$Marshal = [System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal]
#$Bstr = $Marshal::SecureStringToBSTR($securepwd)
#$pswd = $Marshal::PtrToStringAuto($Bstr)
#$Marshal::ZeroFreeBSTR($Bstr)
$RunAs = New-Object System.Management.Automation.PSCredential ('Domain\Account', $securepwd)
I'm not as good as most folks on here though, just giving it a stab.