austere advice so you’ll Overcome obstacles
Use coupons, eat homecooked meals only, and exercise, read, and play board games or card games for entertainment. You can likely save money by not subscribing to internet service, instead using public computers or hot spots from local libraries or perhaps your university. However due to the pandemic, I can understand if you are wary of that.
Do not subscribe to t.v. service. Use a frugal phone plan that charges you according to your usage and limit phonecalls and texts to no more than one or two calls and texts apiece per week at most. I realize this advise is austere. But if you are needing to boost savings in hopes of buying a home without securing a loan while neither of you work very much, you need to be the two most frugal human beings on the planet. You can do it!!!