Andar hule
To be broke, skint — the Honduran way of saying there is nothing left until payday.
Related lesson: Honduran Spanish: A Survival Guide.
Hear it in context
Ando hule hasta que me paguen el viernes.
I'm skint until I get paid on Friday.
—¿Vamos al cine? —No puedo, ando bien hule.
'Shall we go to the cinema?' 'Can't — I'm completely broke.'
Andábamos hule los dos, así que nos quedamos viendo el partido en casa.
We were both broke, so we stayed in and watched the match at home.
What It Actually Means
Andar hule is to have no money — properly none, the state where you are counting bus fares. Hule on its own means rubber or oilcloth; in this idiom it is not doing any dictionary work at all, it is simply the adjective slot in a fixed phrase. Note the verb: Honduras says andar (“to go about”) where a textbook would say estar, and that choice is doing something, framing brokeness as a condition you are walking around in rather than a state you are stuck in.
Where It Comes From
Unclear, and worth saying so plainly rather than inventing a story. The usual guesses lean on the properties of rubber — smooth, stretched thin, nothing to grip — but no one has documented the jump from the material to the wallet, and Honduran dictionaries of regionalisms list the meaning without an etymology. If someone tells you confidently where it comes from, they are guessing too.
How Natives Use It
Casually and without shame, among friends, family and colleagues. It conjugates normally (ando / andás / anda hule, andábamos hule) and takes intensifiers happily: bien hule, hule total. Because it names a temporary cash-flow problem rather than poverty, it is a light word — a way of declining an invitation without either apologising or pleading. You will also hear estar hule from some speakers, and the closely related andar en la olla for the same predicament.
Common Pitfall
You will not find this in a dictionary, and you should not reach for the dictionary version either: estar sin dinero is correct, colourless and instantly foreign. The bigger trap is the border. Every Spanish-speaking country builds its own broke idiom — misio in Peru is the same idea in a different word — and hule outside Honduras and its immediate neighbours will simply be heard as rubber.