Your bro sure sounds accomodating & non-judgemental.
Having "family" help you out will sure save you paying
ridiculous interest rates from the cards. I'd say your big
task now is to lay off the cards; I know - personally - it's
hard, but why make some megabank richer @ your
expense? Great to have a generous bro...let it go at that.
Best wishes for your future financial indepence.

I always got along beautifully with my brother.  We trusted each other
absolutely etc.  I thought he was darn near perfect, and he let me.   But
this would have been a very hard thing for me to do with him, so I can only
imagine how hard this is for you.  But sometimes you have to do what you
have to do.  When you get back home, I hope Persia will be a good and
snuggly cat and make you feel all better as soon as possible.

Jo

Good luck.  Don't sweat it.  We have done this for relatives a couple
of times.  We generally don't give money unless we don't expect to get
it back.  Your brother sounds like an ok dude. :)

-L.

Jill,

Maybe the reason red flags are waving for you is because family history, and
knowledge of your father and brother are warning you to be careful.  On the
positive side, it does help you out of a jam.  On the negative side,
well..... you don't want this to be thrown back in your face for the next
twenty years, or have it held over your head: "You say you can't do X, Y or
Z for me, after I paid off your credit card five years ago???"  (I can feel
for you. My Dad and sometimes my siblings, and to be just, myself, can be so
judgemental I sometimes think it's a miracle we're not all on the Federal
Bench.) However, it sounds to me as if you are doing everything you can to
protect yourself from the eventualities you mentioned. It's kind of a shame
you feel you HAVE to exercise this sort of emotional self-defence, though.
Perhaps  it's good to start with giving your brother the benefit of every
doubt that you can, and assume his true motivation IS generosity and a wish
to  help his sister out of a tight spot. He can hardly have helped notice
that you are not the only person out of work in America, right now.

Good luck, and I hope Persia will be on hand with soothing purrs when you
come home.

Melissa

My sympathy, Jill.  I would NEVER EVER borrow so much as a cup of sugar
from most of my family.  They're terrible.  The only one that I could
trust on something like that is my cat owned sister in Seattle.  However
they have their own problems and the last thing they'd need to have is
me asking for money.

However, when we went back to Idaho last summer, Rob's parents paid for
a brake job, and radiator hose repair on the van and then gave us
traveling cash.  When I tried to make re-payment arrangements, I was
told to forget it.  They wouldn't even tell us the amounts and wouldn't
let us see the bills.  Sigh.  And then she does something off the wall
like telling me that Jim is a user and that Mandy needs to get rid of him.

Pam S.

Good luck and best wishes,

Late with this, but I hope it went well, with no down-side after-effects.
Sam, closely supervised by Mistletoe

Update:  All went well.  The only thing which may have been an "admonition"
was when he said, "You don't have any other surprises like this, do you?"
Hey, it wasn't a surprise to me, I knew I had the bill! LOL  He loaned me a
couple of DVD's and we talked for a bit.  It was fairly painless (at least
up to this point).  Thanks for all the good wishes!

Jill

Good luck Jill I am sure everything will be Ok, My son wanted to do this for
mea few yrs ago so I told him he had enough to do looking after
his family, but if ever I got desperateI would be ringing him first
                Jean.P.