hand to mouth

(from) hand to mouth

With just the bare minimum of money, food, or resources to survive, with little or nothing else to spare. Usually preceded by "live." It's been pretty hand to mouth these days. If I don't find work soon, I don't know how we'll get by. With another child on the way, it looks like we'll be living from hand to mouth for the foreseeable future.
See also: hand, mouth
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

(from) hand to mouth

satisfying only your immediate needs because of lack of money for future plans and investments.
1960 Lynne Reid Banks The L-Shaped Room I'm twenty-eight years old and I'm still living from hand to mouth like a bloody tramp.
See also: hand, mouth
Farlex Partner Idioms Dictionary
See also:
  • hand to mouth, from
  • (from) hand to mouth
  • the dust settles
  • hang a BA
  • hang a BA (at someone)
  • hang a BA at someone
  • Ba
  • one's fair share
  • your fair share of something
  • (one's) fair share (of something)
References in periodicals archive
Earlier in the novel, the narrator says, of the baseball star George Chapman, "Following Chapman during his great season, I somehow thought of him as my alter ego, as an imaginary part of myself that had been innoculated against failure"; in Hand to Mouth, Auster wards off failure by innoculating himself with footnote-sized doses of it.
Hand to Mouth: A Chronicle of Early Failure
"We're like a lot of clubs, it's hand to mouth and finances are tight.
We're not at crisis point yet - Whild; NON-LEAGUE NEWS
OUR parliamentarians are so poorly paid that after retirement they live from hand to mouth. That is why when they need honey and oil, they ask the servant to go to a kabadia shop to buy old bottles that are washed and cleaned first.
Honey and liquor
As a result, the workers were living from hand to mouth. They presented their demands to the DC who assured them that she would explore the possibilities to fulfill their demands.
Protesters demand social security cards
Due to non-payment of salaries for the last three months, we have become hand to mouth and have no option left but sitting here as beggars, she said.
CDA's sanitary workers stage protest against non-payment of salaries
The Yorkshire Building Society Charitable Foundation gave Huddersfield-based Hand to Mouth Ministries PS350.
Makeover for society's hand in puppet theatre
On the other hand, Sheikh Rasheed Ahmed endorsed the views of Altaf Hussein in all and added because of financial deprivation in the country; poor are leading their lives hand to mouth. Corruption is on its peak and country is facing challenges to its sovereignty and survival, he added.
Altaf telephones Sheikh Rashid
On she drones about her 'hand to mouth' working class background when, as the daughter of jobbing actors in Berkshire I hardly think she was at risk of rickets.
I'D like to have [...]
It's not even hand to mouth stuff - it's tougher than that.
Football: Homing in on cash lift
HAND TO MOUTH: Brian Lara trudges back to the Queen's Park Oval pavilion pavilion after falling lbw for 0 in the West Indies' second innings against South Africa.
HAND TO MOUTH; cricket
"But I move about the world as a tramp, living hand to mouth. It sounds silly, but it's gripping television.
Never say die... We love BEST TV
Tony Hollands cycled the Transpennine Trail from Southport to Hornsea in the summer - and raised PS800 for Hand to Mouth, a Christian charity which works in schools.
Cyclist in Bradley charity boost
The pensioners wailed over the injustice and said that Eid-ul-Azha is approaching and they are living from hand to mouth. Raja Ghazanfar Ali a pensioner said that in this price rocketing age stoppage of pension is aggravate their miseries.
Pension of retired Rawal town employees stopped