Posted By Chris Wong, CEO & Chairman, LifeSite
We’re almost a week into Chinese New Years and as is the case for myself (a 4th generation Chinese American) and other Asian families across the world, it’s typical that we visit family and loved ones to wish them good fortune for the Lunar New Year. It also happens to be Valentine’s Day weekend—so one way or another, we’re all thinking about our loved ones.
Personally, when I visit my parents this time of year, I remind them to prepare their tax returns—the earlier the better, especially since I typically help. Remember the former IRS employee who stole numerous identities for a $1.5 million tax-fraud scheme? Filing online is a good way to guard against these kinds of schemes, so this year I asked my parents to file their returns electronically. As expected, their response was that filing online would be confusing and too much trouble.
Like those of us who grew up or are growing up in the digital age, baby boomers have largely adopted the internet and are more connected than ever. Unlike us, many still experience a large divide between usage and comfort. This is particularly concerning because for many of us, our parents’ generation are largely responsible for storing and tracking multiple generations’ family documents, many of which exist only in their heads or in physical hard-copy form.
For this reason and many others, we built LifeSite Vault to address this problem. As part of our company mission, we like to say LifeSite “connects your head and heart.” We’ve been told it’s catchy, but what does it really mean? To our team, it means being thoughtful and using your “head” to responsibly keep track of your family’s records—and then using your “heart” to make sure loved ones will always have access to this information—“connecting your head and heart”.
For many of our users, LifeSite gives them the impetus (or excuse) to start having long overdue conversations with their loved ones about their family’s information. For me, it means I now know what sort of investments my parents have, where insurance policies are and even what sort of advance directives they’ve chosen.
Every family should have these conversations sooner rather than later, because waiting for something to happen is often too late.
I’m Chris Wong (LifeSite CEO, oldest son, husband and father of four) and I welcome you to join me in connecting your family’s head and heart.
