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Glite Dictionary
to tighten one's belt

to tighten one's belt

5 5.8
Spend less and live more simply because you have less money
  • idiom
  • Informal
translation icon : apretarse el cinturón
  • It's time to tighten our belts.
  • tighten your belt a bit
  • need to tighten our belts
  • tighten your belt and go

Examples

  • We've all had to tighten our belts.

    Road Hard (2015)

  • Credit crunch or not, housing boom or bust, we need to tighten our belts, live with less, and give more.

    Blog text (8)

  • You gotta tighten your belt.

    This Is 40 (2012)

  • Sometimes we all need to tighten our belts.

    Blog text (7)

  • We're all tightening our belts.

    Blog text (7)

  • Listen, my lawyers are burning through my money and we're gonna have to tighten our belts.

    Rampart (2011)

  • So, I've made a list of places where we can tighten our belts.

    Hitchcock (2012)

  • I know that will require tightening our belts and doing without many of our entitlements and comforts.

    Blog text (8)

  • Politicians and managers speak about having to tighten our belts, about living beyond our means, while they themselves have filled their pockets (Gerlach, 2000).

    Academic text (2018)

  • We all need to tighten our belts during these hard economic times to make ends meet.

Synonyms

to save a buck
vsto tighten one's belt
  • Informal
2 6.4

Spend less money than usual when you buy something

is about long term frugal living because income dropped rather than small savings
to curtail spending
vsto tighten one's belt
1 4.3

To spend less money to save or avoid debt

focuses on ongoing frugal living due to lowered income
to stretch one's budget
vsto tighten one's belt
1 3.7

Make your money last longer by spending carefully

is used when people cut spending because income fell
to tighten the purse strings
vsto tighten one's belt
  • Informal
1 5.8

To spend less money and control how money is used

is about living frugally because income has fallen
to penny-pinch
vsto tighten one's belt
  • Informal
1 7.7

Spend very little money and avoid buying things you do not need

is about cutting back because of lack of money rather than habit

How Frugal

to scrimp
8 7.4
to tighten one's belt
  • Informal
5 5.8
frugal
31 4.9
to economize
  • US
7 5.0
to cut back
169 2.9
spendy
  • UK
1 8.2

Surface Forms

tighten one's belt infinitive
tightened one's belt past
tightened one's belt past participle
tightening one's belt present participle
tightens one's belt third person singular

Morphology

tighten + one's + belt

The literal image of making a belt tighter conveys restriction or cutting back, so a learner who knows 'tighten' and 'belt' can probably infer a sense of reducing or restraining something. However, mapping that restriction specifically to spending and financial frugality is a metaphorical extension that is not fully predictable without exposure (though the metaphor is cross-linguistically common), so the expression is only partially transparent.

Etymology

Tighten one's belt comes from the image of pulling a belt tighter when money is short and you must buy less food or clothes. So today it means 'to reduce spending and live more simply'.