my brother

I think that I have mentioned before that the only reason that I am still living here, even though I hate it, is that I brought my brother up here with me from RI, and he loves it here and wants to stay for the rest of his life. We have a joint checking account. We are supposed to be sharing expenses. He is not frugal. I've done the finances for us, and his business, which is selling books (primarily) on line, has been loosing money almost every month since we got here. Sometimes, he's lost several hundred per month, during the winter, because of extra heating expenses to keep his books from freezing.  He goes out to eat lunch almost every day, even though he is loosing money, and I've had to use my home equity line of credit to keep us going despite his inability to pay half our expenses. All the money that I had left when I got here, after paying 2/3 in cash for the house, is gone. I have very little income, over the last 2 years, almost nothing, really.  But every penny goes to keeping our bills paid  We've been struggling to pay heating bills this winter. Heating season is almost over, but not quite. I found out today that he opened a separate account when a bank statement fell out of his pocket. He tried to hide it from me.  I don't know how to feel about it. On the one hand, he has every right to have a savings account and put money in it. He has no retirement fund and is 52 and needs to have money put aside. But when we are struggling so much it is difficult to stand around knowing that he has money put aside and we have bills we can't pay.  We need to generate more income, as well as cutting some of the expenses. We have a pending $815 oil bill to pay. It is $4 per gallon, now, and that is way too much. I'm not getting enough help from him, and I don't know what to do about it. He spends an enormous amount each winter to keep his books in a sauna, and we cannot afford it.  I don't want to be mad about this, but it is frustrating.  It is especially frustrating that I suspect that my mother told him that I was planning to abandon him and he needed to save money to protect himself in that case.