May I add,
German framing relies on timbers resting atop each other with very shallow connections, this is especially true of joists and other cross beams that sit in very shallow pockets. A minimal pocket is desirable as it does help to handle the beam's tendency to move laterally over time.
Around here, a lot of the old barns have joists that just rest atop other members, not secured or connected to them in any way. This works for the most part, but some of these joists have traveled over time. Although this would be easy to prevent just by keeping the floor boards in constant repair.
The biggest way to keep costs down as said is in proper design, don't go all out. If a frame is well designed and well proportioned, it makes efficient use of materials and has its own beauty apart from that of a richly decorated frame. This very fact is why the farmhouses of my ancestral homeland have such a strong appeal to me; in their austere simplicity they are beautiful.
If you are confident in your own abilities, an additional way to keep costs low is by doing as much of the work as you can, especially if you have hand-tools at your disposal.
I am working on a project right now that I am doing as much of the work as I can by hand (with some help from willing friends). Basically the only costs to me are glass for windows, wire, and pipe, along with some window and door hardware, and perhaps some bricks to make an oven and a chimney (although my brother kind of wants to make some bricks for me, and I may make the chimney out of random fieldstone), and the cost to have some boards milled for the floors. Everything else is free -the wood to make the timbers included.
However, the drawback to this approach is that it requires a tremendous amount of time and a great deal of hard work.
