belt tightening
Financial restraint measures
Belt tightening is reducing spending or economizing, especially during financial difficulty.
The image is of cinching a belt tighter as one loses weight from eating less.
Usually appears as a noun phrase or adjective: The company announced belt tightening measures, After the layoffs, there was serious belt tightening at home.
Also spelled belt-tightening.
- retrenchmentReduction of expenditures
- budget cutsPlanned spending reductions
- pinchSqueeze with fingertips
- lean timesPeriod of financial hardship
- hard timesPeriod of difficulty
cutbacks · spending freeze · squeeze · budgeting · frugality · thrift · austerity · savings · sacrifice · restraint · prudence · fasten · curtailment · waist · reduction · hole · fiscal · buckle
- Government Reformbudget reform, fiscal reform, government reform, policy reform, regulatory reform
- cutbackscutback, cutbacks, decrease, layoff, reduction
- frugalityfrugality, thrift, frugal, penny-pinching, economize
- reducingshrinking, lessening, diminishing, decreasing, cutting back
- thrift sayingspenny saved, penny wise, pinch pennies, penny pincher, live within means
- austerityausterity measures, spending cuts, budget cuts, fiscal austerity, deficit reduction
belt tighteningsplurging
Spending freely, excessively
extravagance · spending spree · profligacy · free spending · splashing out
belt tighteningfiscal stimulus
Government spending to boost economy
deficit spending · economic expansion · economic stimulus · pump priming · quantitative easing
belt, tighten, belts, belted, belting, tight, tightly, tightness, tightens