tighten one's belt

1. 1.

   live frugally and use less resources

   “In the new economy, we all have to learn to tighten our belts”

   Broadersave

Questions about tighten one's belt

What does tighten one's belt mean?

tighten one's belt means "live frugally and use less resources".

Is tighten one's belt a common word?

tighten one's belt is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.