省吃俭用

shěng chī jiǎn yòng

to scrimp and save

Character by character

省shěng
save on

吃chī
eating

俭jiǎn
frugal

用yòng
spending

父母省吃俭用几十年，才凑够了首付。

His parents scrimped for decades to scrape together the down payment.

Tone: positive (praise).

Learn this in Lesson 28 · HSK 5–6: 房子与婚姻 (Housing and marriage)

A dialogue, a reading, word cards with audio and a drill that uses it, in Learn Chinese with Bao. This lesson is free.