How to Money · Wednesday, September 16, 2026
Beth Pinsker stressed the importance of setting up digital estate planning tools, such as legacy contacts for phones and managing two-factor authentication. She shared her experience of needing to maintain her mother's phone service for a year after her death to ensure access to accounts that required two-factor verification, underscoring the critical role these digital assets play in managing an estate.
“If you do not have that phone, not only is it a nostalgia thing, because there might be pictures and you know, things that you want. You absolutely need that phone for two factor, because if you like, I tried to log onto my mom's bank account on her desktop and it wanted two factor for her phone, and so I, you know, took possession of her phone and it with me, and so whenever you know, I needed to get into something, I could two factor it and have it sent to my mom's phone.”
“So I paid for phone service on her phone for a year, just to make sure that. Now. Yeah, so I you know the phone, You know, the person uses apps, they have texts, they have their phone contacts, they have you know you they're already logged in in some cases and you can just press the button you know, you just need to have access.”