down on one's luck

comparative more down on one's luck · superlative most down on one's luck

1. idiomaticUnlucky or undergoing a period of bad luck, especially with respect to financial matters.

   I'm sorry to hear you are down on your luck ;

   1895, Marie Corelli, The Sorrows of Satan: or The Strange Experience of One Geoffrey Tempest, Millionaire […], 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: J[oshua] B[allinger] Lippincott Company, published 1896, →OCLC, page 14

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   If Crabtree is down on his luck he will most likely be willing to do anything for money.

   1915, Edward Stratemeyer, chapter 28, in The Rover Boys in Business

   He is down on his luck. He asked me to ask you to ask somebody named Boylan, a billsticker, to give him a job as a sandwichman.

   , Episode 16

   Willie "tries to resist"—being, as the synopsis explains, "an attractive and intelligent girl who is simply down on her luck in the ruins of postwar Germany."

   1954 April 19, “The New Pictures”, in Time

   When you're down on your luck (oh-oh-oh) / Don′t you know? you gotta pass the buck (get it off me)

   1978, Love Committee, “Pass The Buck”, in Law & Order

   Pitcher Kyle Lohse, 29, who has had unsuccessful stints with the Minnesota Twins, Cincinnati Reds and Philadelphia Phillies, seems to have found a home with the St. Louis Cardinals, a team that has a knack for turning around pitchers down on their luck.

   2008 July 1, Mel Antonen, “Rays, A's using same formula for success”, in USA Today, retrieved 03 Nov 2008