on a shoestring

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]

Example Sentences

“They’re on a shoestring budget.”

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

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“We can’t do it on a shoestring budget and be competitive and win at the level that we have won and want to win. It’s something that we’ve been ramping up.”

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When you stop making middle-class movies — movies with a moderate budget, as opposed to ones made on a shoestring or ones that cost $200 million — you’re hollowing out a middle class of people who make them.

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“We’re working on a shoestring now,” McDonnell said.

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