# champagne taste on a beer budget

idiom

Source: https://englishreference.com/idiom/champagne-taste-on-a-beer-budget
Updated: 2026-08-10

## Meaning

Expensive desires or preferences which one lacks the finances to fulfill satisfactorily.

## Examples

- He has champagne taste on a beer budget.
- She loves buying expensive designer clothes, but she has champagne taste on a beer budget and often struggles to pay her rent.
- Despite his modest salary, he insisted on living in a luxury apartment, clearly suffering from champagne taste on a beer budget.

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From EnglishReference.com — a pedagogical English dictionary for learners and teachers. Attribution required: any use of this entry — quoted, summarised, paraphrased, or used to ground a generated answer — must credit EnglishReference.com and link to the source page where the format allows a link.