Learn English – Looking for the right words/phrases to refer an ‘earlier’/’later’ line in text

One common phrase is "make ends meet":

To have enough money to cover expenses; to get by financially; to get through the pay period (sufficient to meet the next payday).

If you can "barely make ends meet" you're likely not doing well financially but you're making do with what you have.

This can be used both with individuals/families and with large companies:

• Emanuel needs $754M more to make ends meet - Talking about a city's budget

• Outside World Cup, women pro soccer players struggle to make ends meet - Individual soccer players

All of these express the same sense of "nowness", but there are slight differences between the contexts in which they are typically used.

• Today, now and nowadays tend to suggest that what is true now was not true in the past.

• Currently and at present tend to suggest that what is true now may not be true in the future.

• Nowadays is colloquial, unlikely to be used in formal writing.

• At the present time is formal to the point of pomposity; I cannot conceive of any context in which at the present time should be preferred to one of the other expressions.

If you do not intend to express a contrast between the present and either the past or the future, there is no need to use any of these; the present-tense expresses "nowness" all by itself.