Ask HN: I am stuck, what should I do?

She could sell the house at 5% below market that should make the sale go through quickly.

Use the proceeds to rent a very small place and try very hard to get another job. Cut down costs to the bone asap.

If your mother has been working there for 20 years she should be entitled to some severance package.

Do not borrow money or otherwise increase the debt to plug the hole, that way lies madness.

The rest is too vague to be able to give you any actionable advice or even options.

    > She could sell the house at 5% below market 
    that should make the sale go through quickly.
    > Use the proceeds to rent a very small place 
    and try very hard to get another job. 
    Cut down costs to the bone asap.

Yeah, if we manage to sell the home, we're left with about 50% of its cost which is enough to buy a smaller place in this city or rent a much better place somewhere in Asia (for example) for years. With my mother nearing her 50, I really doubt she can find any decent job (she's a financial director [I dunno what they call this position] in the biggest company in the city). However, I've been thinking that she could learn something with my help and freelance. But I'm not sure if there's any job out there in the internets that can be taught in a short timespan.

    > If your mother has been working there for 
    20 years she should be entitled to some 
    severance package.

Never happens here, unfortunately. Employees aren't protected from the employer at all.

However, I've been thinking that she could learn something with my help and freelance. But I'm not sure if there's any job out there in the internets that can be taught in a short timespan.

That's a cool idea. On of the easiest that comes to mind would be chopping Photoshop files for Wordpress themes or HTML/CSS templates - it might seem somewhat daunting but if you gave her a starting point she would basically just have to cut and paste into the right parts a lot of the time. Even though there are tons of people already doing it I suspect that finding and partnering with a good designer would still be quite profitable. Depending on her English skills, another option would be getting into SEO - there's still a lot of room for growth in that market and the technical requirements can sometimes be fairly minimal. Copywriting might be an applicable related field, whether in her native language or by offering translation services from English to her native language (obviously depends on her English reading and what her native language is).

she's a financial director [I dunno what they call this position] in the biggest company in the city

A more industrious option might be to try leveraging your combined experience. There are endless opportunities for providing very basic and extremely niche enterprise apps which pay pretty nicely. She may have some ideas in this regard related to her job, either for an application that would make a common task easier or that would just compete with a complicated app. One of my favourite models is to compete with a complicated ancient piece of enterprise software by reducing the feature set and offering it for cheaper. The trick is to keep things extremely simple.

Emigration to avoid legal troubles usually adds to the trouble, the scapegoat thing is troublesome but usually the best way to deal with that sort of thing is to go visit a lawyer first to see how actionable it really is.

Yep, legal issues are bad enough; however, I'm totally helpless here. Everything's connected in such a weird manner that it sounds like not even remotely possible. Let me just say that my mother's employer is genuinely interested in not letting her get into the trouble, because if he does, there's enough evidence for whole company, him included, to sink after her. However, either he's crazy, or he's an idiot, or he's got a plan to make everyone cannon fodder.

Did I say that he, the company owner, is also a relative of ours? You can imagine how twisted the whole situation is.

I don't really know what to tell you, except to offer some encouragement. I'm only a few years older than you, and while my experience was different I have also been through some bad times. Even now, I'm in a very rough spot financially, but I'm on my way out. Everybody goes through their own personal hell sometimes, and in my case I found that the most important keys to getting out of it are determination (which it sounds like you have), an independent and resourceful spirit (which it sounds like you have) and the ability to ask for help (which you just did). Note the last two: never be too proud to ask for help, but never count on getting it, either.

Without knowing where you are now, I can't comment on your decision about moving to some other country, but fortunately you have valuable skills which will help you find work anywhere. Definitely consider the cost of living in any country you want to move to compared to the amount of money you can make working remotely - it sounds like you're in an area with comparatively low wages, and by that standard I assume the cost of living in your country is less expensive than, for example, the US.

Thanks. I'm quite sure, I'm in better spot than lots of people that have to struggle for survival on daily basis.

I've always dreamed about moving to Asia, probably India (or wherever they speak English, really). Living costs should be even less than here (they're quite low where I live, to be honest) and I heard there are great opportunities for tech guys there. I just wonder if I need some kind of work visa or something like that. Indian HNers, anyone? :)

Work visa (and related) rules in India - http://www.mha.nic.in/pdfs/work_visa_faq.pdf

Portal for details about immigration to India - http://www.immigrationindia.nic.in/

>>Living costs should be even less

Most of the times, yes. However there are differences; afaik, metros like Mumbai or Delhi are costlier than places like Chennai or Bangalore. (And places like Mysore (where I am), cost of living is even lesser; (comes at a cost: no multiplexes / big shopping malls / nightlife etc) US $ 1000 (that'll be approx INR 45,000) per person per month would be more than sufficient to lead a good life)

>>heard there are great opportunities for tech guys

Indian startup scene is warming up, and _a_lot_ of web 2.0 ones in them.

>>Indian HNers

You could also try posting in http://hackerstreet.in

Good luck!

Can you mother consider a strategic default on her house debt? If she's looking at debt she can't afford to pay off, bankruptcy is probably a decent option.

Real estate isn't going down here; thus, strategic default is not an option, but we probably could get some decent amount of money if we can get it sold and after we pay the mortgage to the bank (probably with some extra fee?). The problem is, that it takes lots of time to sell it here.

If she expects to be able to pay it back in the future, she could take a second mortgage against whatever equity she has in the house.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_equity_loan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_equity_line_of_credit

I'm not really sure this is applicable. Banks here work differently from those in USA or EU, they won't give you a loan 90% of the time if you got a mortgage on your hands. Sounds impossible? Well, people don't trust banks and banks don't trust people.

Thanks for advice anyway.

It would be helpful if you said where "here" is.

Sorry, but no. No hard feelings, please.

Not even the country? Certainly no hard feelings, but I think you would have gotten better answers.

I hope that answers you did get helped you.