cut your coat according to your cloth

C

cut your coat according to your cloth

Meaning

• adapt to one’s circumstances; make sure one’s plans are appropriate to one’s resources.
• to act in accordance with or shop based on your financial limitations.
• only purchase goods and services you have sufficient funds to pay for.
• ensure your plans are appropriate for your resources.
• having only enough money to do something and no more than that.
• make decisions and plans based on what you have, not what you’d like.
• avoid buying things you can’t afford.
• do as well as you can with the limited resources you have.

Example Sentences

1. Of course, we’d love a luxurious car, but you have to cut your coat according to your cloth.
2. You must start to cut your coat according to your coat to avoid getting into financial problems.
3. We all would love to drive a luxurious vehicle, but it is only sometimes possible since we have to cut our coats according to our clothes.
4. This year has been tough financially, and we are ready to cut our coats according to our clothes.
5. We were educated to cut our coats according to our cloth. The finance minister has not followed this advice.
6. High credit card debt taught me the lesson of cutting my coat according to my cloth.
7. Tom talks much about having problems making ends meet. I know that you must cut your coat according to your cloth.
8. You should cut your coat to your cloth and stop buying expensive shoes and clothes.
9. The period of foreign aid is about to lapse, and we have to cut our coats according to our cloth.
10. The funds are getting low, and on this second occasion, the business is compelled to cut its coat according to the cloth.
11. Taxpayers are no longer supporting the organizations. Therefore, the organizations must now cut their coats according to the cloth.

Origin

If a tailor cuts a coat according to your cloth, they will not pay attention to the cloth’s pattern, woof, or warp. They would take advantage of every scrap, despite how the ultimate garment would appear. They would make it out of any material there was at hand. The idiom was proverbial in England in 1546, when John Heywood compiled a dialogue titled Conteynyng Prouerbes and Epigrammes. Nobody knows how earlier people used it in the English language.

The phrase indicates how people must adjust their actions, attitudes, or other things based on the situation they find themselves in, working with the cloth they have. It is not always a great thing.

Clothes, Money