gravy train, ride the

To be in a state, position, or job where one makes an excessive amount of money without expending much or any effort. I'll be riding the gravy train once I get paid from the settlement of the lawsuit! My brother has been riding the gravy train ever since he married his wife, whose family owns one of the largest oil companies in the world.

Experience excessive ease, success, or profit, especially undeservedly. For example, Now that his brother is paying all his bills, Jim is riding the gravy train. The word gravy has long meant "easy profits," and the term is believed to come from 19th-century railroad slang, although the earliest recorded use dates from the early 1900s. W.C. Handy used it in one of his famous blues songs written in 1914, in which he bemoans falling off the gravy train. Also see easy street.