down on (one's) luck

Experiencing a period of misfortune. Ryan is really down on his luck these days—he just lost his job, and then he got evicted from his apartment.

Afflicted by misfortune, as in They've been down on their luck ever since they moved out West. [Colloquial; second half of 1800s]

Someone who is down on their luck is suffering a period of bad luck. At that time he was down on his luck — his wife had left him and his job was giving him terrible back pain. As a forty year old flight attendant down on her luck, she has a face that looks tired of life.

Short of cash or credit. A nineteenth-century description of financial embarrassment, usually of a temporary nature, this term implies, with down, that the person so described at one time had more resources. Thus Thackeray wrote, “The Chevalier was. . . . to use his own picturesque expression, ‘down on his luck’” (Pendennis, 1849).