Whether they’re older millennials or young Baby Boomers, many middle-aged parents find themselves in a unique position in life: while busy parenting their own children, they increasingly take on more care duties for their own aging parents. Sandwiched between care responsibilities, they are suddenly part of the “sandwich generation.”
If you fall in this category, you likely have to handle multigenerational “life admin” tasks (banking, medical care, tax filing, etc.). The right digital tools can help you organize, store, reference, and share the items you need to do life admin right.
With a cloud-based vault like Prisidio, sandwiched adults can centrally store and organize life essentials for their parents, their children, and themselves. Here’s more on how a cloud-based vault can help.
Organize your parents’ key documents to make life admin simpler
If you’re a sandwiched adult, your aging parents may need help managing key life admin duties, like handling their own medical care and outlining end-of-life wishes. With a cloud-based vault like Prisidio, you can help your parents manage their essential life documents and keep their affairs in order.
For example, let’s say your mom mentions while you’re driving her to the eye doctor that she’s moved her power of attorney (POA) directives from her filing cabinet to her home safe.
Because Prisidio is fully accessible as a native mobile app, you can take out your phone as soon as you park and immediately update location info for the POA so you know where to find the document. That’s not possible with many digital storage services, which are accessible primarily via desktop computer.
Of course, a POA is too sensitive for just anyone to view. That’s why Prisidio’s cloud-based vault has custom sharing options so you can designate exactly who has access to each individual item with just a few taps. In Prisidio, you can grant or limit access to your mom, her attorney, and yourself from several places within the app. Want to add another trusted person? You can easily do that from the “People” or the “Document” tab.
POAs aren’t the only documents you can store in a digital vault like Prisidio. Consider storing essential life documents like these:
- Insurance cards
- Medical records
- Financial records
- Property deeds or leases
- Living wills
As your parents' needs change, you can scan and upload additional documents to your cloud-based vault.
Catalog your parents’ valuables to tell their life story
Your parents’ lives are rich with stories that a stack of paper records can’t tell. Their most cherished items, for example, can hold years’ worth of memories. In Prisidio’s cloud-based vault, you can log detailed information about these items to preserve your parents’ life story.
If your mom’s a lifelong vinyl enthusiast, for example, you can upload a photo of her collection and note its appraised value. And with video notes, your dad can retell the story of his first cross-country road trip in his vintage El Camino, along with a photo, the car title and any other details you want to include about the car.
In fact, some video or audio content might be worth storing as heirlooms in and of itself, like a home video of your grandpa singing songs from his childhood or military service.
These features are exclusive to Prisidio – designed so you can capture pieces of your parents’ life story through the items they love.
Prepare your family for the future
When you’re balancing multigenerational care needs, you likely have to manage more than just your parents’ life admin. You may need to enroll your children in a new school, change their medical provider, or help them apply for their first job. Each life stage will come with new documents to reference – and a cloud-based vault can help you store and organize the ones that matter.
What kinds of documents and information should you manage in a cloud-based vault?
- Birth certificates.
- Social security cards.
- Immunization records.
- Child savings account details.
- Paperwork for education trusts.
- Temporary or permanent guardianship nominations.
- Family history and archive records.
With Prisidio’s mobile app, you can reach your children’s documents anywhere and anytime. You’ll value mobile access if you’re moving – or if your college-bound children need their documents in their new apartment. And in case of any unexpected emergency, you may need to access their life essentials on the go.
A mobile-access, cloud-based vault can benefit your parents, too. If you’re moving them into a new senior living community, for example, you can grant them access to any key items in your vault that they may need to reference as they register for programs or services.
And don’t forget about your own needs. Prisidio can help you manage your life essentials – and your family’s – in one central location.