You had to move to a foreign country to screw up badly enough to need a line thrown to you by your parents? The vast majority of adult children who borrow from the Bank of Mom and Dad manage to do it from within a radius of a couple of hundred miles (I just made that up, so please don’t ask me for a cite. I still think it’s reflective of reality).
I wouldn’t worry too much about your ability to bounce back from this.
I like to call it “mooch-ual funds.”
While not a mundane situation, I think MPSIMS would be a more appropriate home for this thread.
Weren’t we swearing at her enough?
Bad, NinjaChick, bad! You have fucked up in a miniscule fashion, and must now be damned for all of…oh, about 30 seconds.
Well…damn.
I came in here all ready to defend my self-loathing further, and then I got to this, and, all I could come up with is “Well, that sounds suspicously true, dammit!”
sigh I grant that my initial reaction might have been a bit overblown. And sure, I could have tried other options. I could have hit up a couple friends for smaller sums, I could have sold my DVD or CD libraries on e-bay, or even my laptop. I briefly considered taking a cash advance from one of my credit cards, obscene interest rate be damned. I think I understood, however subconsciously, that my parents would be the best deal (ie, they’re not going to charge me 5% interest per day and they’re not going to make a big deal if I’m a few days late paying them back. And again, I know I’m hardly the first person to hit their parents up for a loan.
But man, does that pride have a bitter taste when it goes down!
If it makes you feel any better, I still think you’re a fuckup. 
Shit happens to everyone sometimes. Don’t feel bad about it. I don’t like doing it either, but my mom has had to borrow money from me as well.
Then you need to use more mustard!
Do something very grown-up, then, and bring your parents something really nice when you come back to the States. They might be insulted if you offered to pay interest on the loan, but a thank-you gift is always appreciated.
I love you lots, NinjaChick, but I’m going to scold you a little now.
Be goddamn grateful you have parents you can ask! That they’re neither dead nor estranged.
Other than that, good luck - it’ll be over soon. And trust me, life will hit you with more nasty things every day…just gotta keep happy.
I just moved out, and (I suppose I still count as as a twenty-something :o )… when I started looking for a place, I figured I could afford something all by myself.
Unfortunately as anyone in Alberta is aware, the housing market is super-intense, and by the time I learned how to pick a place, I needed a big loan from my parents (like, payment plan involves winning the lottery big). I was imagining the whole experience would be an epiphany of big-screen proportions with swelling background music as I broke into my new exciting life and made it by myself, but instead I had to depend on my parents, I’m still late for work in the mornings, hots girls aren’t partying in the living room on the weekends, and my most exciting nights so far have involved discovering spiders in the yard.
So I have to say you’ve got things as well in hand as any of us can hope for, be grateful to your parents (as I certainly am to mine), and would you like to party in my living room this weekend? 
Could I enjoin you to reiterate that statement to my father and his harpy of a wife? 'Cause…never mind.
Borrowing a few hundred at the tender age of 20? On the scale from Minor Traffic Incident to Familial Excommunication, I think that even rates a mention. But I empathize with your anguish over it. Just pay it off and send a card of thanks with a note that it’ll count toward a bump up in quality of nursing home when the time comes, or if you’re more prone to morbidity, a special inscription on the urn instead of a cheap stick-on printer label.
Stranger
I hear you. More than anything in life I hate asking people for favors, and I particularly hate asking my parents. I think that if I asked, they’d give me a kidney, so the relatively minor things I do ask of them are nothing. But I still hate asking.
I’ll also echo Anaamika: be grateful you have people you can ask. Even if you hate asking them.
The only thing I have to add is this: the fact that you feel terrible about this and hate that you had to fall back on your parents is a very good sign. My idiot sister has been bailed out by the folks for years and seems to consider it more of an entitlement than a problem in need of a solution. With an attitude like yours, I don’t see you spending an entire month’s rent on a pair of boots and then hitting your parents up to cover the rent.
They’re actually going to come out here and use visiting me as an excuse to travel sometime in early October - I’ll be in much better financial standing then, and am considering treating them to a night out (a show and dinner or something).
I am very, very grateful that I have parents I could ask. When I was younger and stupider, our relationship was…not as close as it is now, and I do realize I’m incredibly lucky.
kawaiitentaclebeast: I’d say that makes me feel better but really, it made me nearly wake up my roommate with my laughter.
And doesn’t laughing that hard feel good?
As a successful teacher, I can state that your Maths teacher needs lessons.
The most any teacher should ever say is “If you don’t change your behaviour, you will fail.”
As for budgeting, it is important and you clearly understand that.
The key for me is that you pay the money back. Have a plan. Set repayment periods and targets.
The only reason there is opprobrium* attached to parental loans is that they usually won’t chase you for the money (and may feel an obligation to help).
Anyone can have a financial crisis (something breaks; a crime is committed…) - you may well need to borrow to cope.
I personally always pay off my credit cards and never want to borrow - except I had to when buying a house!
Good luck!
*well I am a teacher 
That would depends on whether the question is addressed at my roommate, or myself. I say yes. My roommate, if asked, would likely disagree. So there!
My 63 year old sister in law just borrowed $2500 from her ageing mother. And she doesn’t have a job so she probably won’t be able to pay it back without borrowing from one of her children.
There…feel better?
Seriously, listen to Annamika, and remember how extremely lucky you are to be where you are and have your parents around to help you out on such a whim.
Let me put this into perspective for you. My family ended up on the wrong side of the Cultural Revolution in China, like a lot of people. At my age, my mother was a farmgirl whose day started at 5AM cutting firewood and shuttling buckets of well water and my father was a barely literate sheperd boy on the edge of the Gobi desert. My grandparents were either dead or imprisoned, by the Japanese, the Nationalists, the Communists, and any number of others about whom no one cares about today. In my family, 20+year old children are breadwinners who supported their (surviving) parents and that’s the way it’s been for as long as anyone can remember. We are of course in much better circumstances now but the culture hasn’t changed. A fuck up such as yours would have been a lot less amusing for my parents.
It would have to take some kind of unprecedented catastrophe for me to have to ask my parents for money, maybe if my (Suburban Canadian) neighbourhood was raided by brigands who clean out my bank accounts and retirement investments, or had a limb shot off fleeing during a battle or air raid, or if one of us developed cancer (all of which has happened to my family in the last few generations). I’m 23 and my sister’s 20, and we haven’t had to do it yet. knocks on wood
See to it you don’t fuck up again, it’s only sheer blind luck that your parents are rich Americans, 80% of the world’s population are not so lucky.
Feel better now?