Some young people of the French lower-class are faced with limited financial resources. While some of them get by thanks to parental financial support, others have to rely on social assistance from the State. Based on a new approach using Halbwachs’s work, this article highlights how they manage their budgets thanks to economical food choices as well as techniques and tactics adapted to penury. Prudence and parsimony – qualities acquired in childhood – shape their perceptions of the present and the future as well as their relationships with others, and this contributes to a specific ethos with an ascetic dimension analyzed by the authors.

Keywords: Lower classes, youth, household economics, ascetic ethos, sacrificial ethos