The two biggest savings are to reduce the sprite size and to reduce the frame rate. Figure out the smallest that your sprites can be while still communicating the important information, and aim for that.
You can also reuse animations (for example, have only one "action" animation per character, but have different particle effects for different spells and attacks), and reuse entire animation sets (for example, some characters can just be recolours of other characters).
If money is very tight, you can forego animation entirely, and instead have a small number of still sprites that move slightly programmatically (e.g. move back a bit when hit, move forward when casting, etc). Many older games, including classics like the NES/SNES Final Fantasy games did this, most of the characters in those had only a few frames of animation.
Since this is your first project, I highly recommend scaling your animation wishlist way down. Do only enough to make the game playable and easy to understand. This isn't your magnum opus, and chances are, very few people will see the final result anyway. Focus on learning the skills you want to learn, not on making a beautiful product. If you're not using this project to teach yourself to animate, then don't animate it more than you have to.