adverse circumstances, adversity, affliction, aggravation, annoyance, asperity, austerity, bad luck, blight, broken fortune, bummer, care, cross, curse, danger, deprivation, difficulties, difficulty, discomfort, distress, downer, drudgery, embarrassment, genteel poverty, hard knocks, hard life, hard lot, hard pinch, hardcase, hardness, hazard, ill fortune, impecuniosity, impecuniousness, insolvency, irritation, light purse, mischance, misery, misfortune, narrow means, peril, plight, poorness, poverty, predicament, pressure, privation, rigor, sea of troubles, slender means, straitened circumstances, straits, stress, stress of life, suffering, tight squeeze, toil, travail, trial, tribulation, trouble, troubles, unhappiness, unprosperousness, vale of tears, vicissitude, voluntary poverty, vows of poverty, want