I currently support myself completely and my son half time on 13K a year, since the scamdemic dropped my job to half time hours or less for the last two and a half years. Between 2007 and 2017, I made under 20K yearly ($10/hr or less) and had no issues supporting a family of four. My idea of budgeting is paying for housing, utilities, food, fuel, and house/auto insurance first then any money left over is spendable or saveable. There's no creativity about it... When one has never in a half century lived outside of the poverty-line level socio-economic caste, you learn not to waste money on expensive things that aren't crucial and to reduce/reuse and buy used instead of new whenever possible.

My main savings is not paying rent. The creativity would apply to locating owner-financed housing for purchase because banks hate my level of income.