on a shoestring

Idioms  

1. With very limited financial means, as in The newlyweds were living on a shoestring. The precise allusion in this term is unclear. One fanciful theory is that debtors in British prisons would lower a shoe by its laces from a window so as to collect funds from visitors or passers-by. A more likely theory is that it alludes to the slender shape of a shoelace, likening it to slender resources. [Late 1800s]

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Example Sentences

He finally got some funding from Norman Lear himself and shot the movie on a shoestring budget.

From The Wall Street Journal • Dec. 15, 2025

"It was all done on a shoestring budget," he said.

From BBC • Sep. 23, 2025

That low overhead allowed presses that run on a shoestring to have their books available in independent bookstores and Amazon.

From New York Times • Apr. 17, 2024

And he’s in an only slightly less-distant last place in South Carolina, where he’s parking himself for the next month on a shoestring budget.

From Slate • Jan. 17, 2024

Everything that the Nation of Islam did in those days, from Mr. Muhammad on down, was strictly on a shoestring.

From "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" by Alex Malcolm X;Hailey