Do I need a membership plug in

Hi
I am building a site for a European Charity (as usual no money to spend) and what I am trying to do with the site is this.
The first part of the site will have open content for all visitors, the second part is to be restricted to members of the EAC as it will contain some secure financial information, minutes of meetings etc; and also pages to make them feel special.
I have looked at various membership plug-ins and they all appear to be too sophisticated for what I want to achieve. For example the pages will not require shopping carts etc.
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Question:</u>

Do I need a membership plugin or will just entering a password protection on these pages suffice when they are published. And by making the log in page password protected does this mean that password will open all the other pages of the section without the need to keep inserting the password. Finally I do not want these pages to appear in any submenu in the first section, is this possible.

I will willingly answer any questions and any help will be warmly appreciated.

regards