What does “von Monat zu Monat gerettet” mean in German?

Karin Thaler talks about a very poor childhood and says, “Wir haben uns von Monat zu Monat gerettet.” The verb retten usually means “to rescue” someone from danger. Here she uses it for money: each month they only just survived, with no plan and nothing left over. The word makes it sound desperate, not just a little tight. So she is saying they scraped through, month after month, hoping to reach the next one.

Spoken line: “Wir haben uns von Monat zu Monat gerettet.” — “We barely made it from one month to the next.” retten on its own means “to rescue” or “to save” from real danger: “Der Bademeister hat das Kind gerettet.” = “The lifeguard saved the child.” With sich (uns/mich/dich), it often means people just managed to get through something hard. “Von ... zu ...” means moving step by step, here from one month to the next. More examples: - “Wir haben uns von Tag zu Tag gerettet.” = “We got through one day at a time.” - “Mit einem kleinen Job haben wir uns über den Winter gerettet.” = “A small job got us through the winter.” Usually this phrasing sounds serious — it points to a time that felt genuinely hard, not just a tight week.