Time Soup
I was discussing the 'cost of living' with a friend and he mentioned an experience where he'd seen a lady at the store bemoan the price of cabbage. His point was clear: as an historically cheap food it was striking to see it priced so high. I was at the shops a week later and a cabbage was over $AUD7. The carrots were much cheaper and I decided a lesson could be: when cabbage is cheap make cabbage soup, but when carrots are cheap make carrot soup.
A few weeks later we were discussing time. It occurred to me the soup analogy works here too. When you have a lot of time, time is cheap, so make time soup. Use your abundant resource, since it's usually cheaper.
What does this look like? If you have lots of money but little time then hiring someone to help might make sense. It might be making your own bread when your time is cheap but a loaf is not. If you have children but not much money then playing games together, even cards, may be better than going to the movies. It might mean exhausting your cheap options before going to a more expensive one. It also might mean looking into how the cheap option will change with time and investing now to make something cheaper later:
exercising to have more energy later
learning a musical instrument to be able to express emotion more 'cheaply'
It also means adapting to what is cheap here and now. I think it also means being flexible with tastes.
This is basically the approach of going to the markets and reacting rather than going with a set meal plan in mind.