Badfish,

You are very brave, being as young as you are and asking for help for your parents. Your parents should be proud.

Many people enter into a business venture that can go south.. the stress can be very overwhelming.

Whether it's a hair salon, or a rental property, or bad stock picks.. events can happen and market conditions can cause the business to become a financial drain.

However.. it's not the market conditions that is causing the stress, but it's the reactions people have to those conditions. Let me explain:

People HOLD ON to things much longer than they should.. especially when things are going wrong.

If I have a rental property... and my tenants are not paying.. that means that I have to pay the mortgage until I can evict them and find new tenants. This means that every month I hold on to a house with no tenants becomes a drain on my family finances. If I wait too long.. I put my OWN house in jeopardy. Should I do that... or let the bank foreclose on my rental property?

If I have a some stock that I bought.. but the value is going down instead of up.. I might get concerned.. but if it keeps falling.. I could lose it all. Should I cut my losses now and sell immediately.. or should I let a sinking ship fall much more and end up with nothing?

If I have a hair salon that is NOT PROFITABLE.. and hasn't been for years.. I could keep working, keep trying to invite customers in and spend money trying to get customers to come in.. continue to pour the family finances into it and put all that on the line.. OR I can refuse to put my family at risk.. and let the business venture fail on it own.. close up shop.. sell the chairs and the the products and stop paying the rent.. and take a total loss on the business. Then go out and get a job to make sure that our family mortgage gets paid.

The decision to "Let Go" is a hard one, but it's your parents decision to make or not make. In my opinion.. holding on will only continue to cause strife.

I'm sure that you'd prefer to have it all disappear and have your mom and dad back.

If you can... have your parents watch the show BREAKTHROUGH with Tony Robbins on NBC.

The story of Ron and Marie is EXACTLY where your parents are at right now.

Here's the link:
Breakthrough with Tony Robbins | NBC.com


Badfish,
The greatest gift your parents have is EACH OTHER and YOU. They just need to realize that.

If you advertise on Craigslist.. just do it with your parents knowledge and approval.. don't do it without their permission.

I know you want to help.. but there ARE vultures scouring Craigslist and there are dangerous people who would swindle your parents out of whatever they have left.

There are also people who could legitimately buy the business from them.. but it's hard to know the difference, so I'd tread carefully.

Anyone else have any ideas?

Thank you for the advice. My mom is renting the place but she signed a lease for a certain amount of time. My parents last options are waiting for the lease to be done with but my step dad has told us numerous times that we just need to get rid of the place as soon as possible because if we wait until the lease expires than we'll be in a much worse situation. I hope I can convince them into looking into other things other than waiting it out.

It's really taking a toll on our lives, our relationship with one another, and everything. Thank you for the link. I will take a look at it right after I post this. Yes, I will ask them but it's a very touchy subject with them and every time it's brought up, there's always a terrible fight so I'll have to find a good way to approach them.

Thank you so much for your advice. I really appreciate it. It's nice to know someone wants to help. My mom invested in this place after talking to her sister and the other workers there. Unfortunately, she was naive and took their word on what they said. Now everyone is paying late and everything you can imagine that can go wrong is. My step dad's car broke down, our dog recently got sick and had a ridiculous bill of $3,000, and then a pipe broke at my mother's hair salon causing a leak that destroyed the carpeting in the store next to us so she had to pay to fix it all. They barely have any money in their savings now that this salon has sucked all of it. We only have barely a $100 a month to get buy extra for our groceries and anything else. Like you said, I really just want this out of our lives. Every thing is a struggle now and it's a shame to see that the debt we've accumulated from this business is holding us down.