making ends meet
Scraping by financially
Making ends meet is managing to pay for basic necessities with limited resources.
The ends are income and expenses, and meeting them means having just enough to cover what you need: After the layoffs, we're barely making ends meet.
The phrase implies financial struggle rather than comfort—surviving, not thriving.
- livelihoodMeans of earning income
- eke outObtain with difficulty
- incomeRegular monetary receipts
- budgetingAllocating funds systematically
- expensesMoney spent on things
bills · cost of living · paycheck to paycheck · hand-to-mouth · pinching · survival · savings · scraping · subsistence · bare minimum · solvency · cutting corners · robbing Peter to pay Paul · thriftiness · gig economy · couponing · hardship · tight budget
- hardshipshardship, adversity, struggle, misfortune, difficulties
- financially afloatafloat, solvent, debt-free, in the black, breaking even
- life skillsreading, writing, cooking, cleaning, laundry
- povertypoverty line, poor, poverty rate, impoverished, generational poverty
- blue collarhard hat, blue collar, blue-collar jobs, factory work, manual labor
making ends meetwealthy
Having abundant financial resources
prosperous · affluent · living large · well-off · rich
making ends meetgoing broke
going under · bankrupt · going bankrupt · in the red · insolvent
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