Best Tips & Advice for Balancing the Home Budget?

This is among those topics that we can't discuss enough... So, what are those tips, techniques, and tried-and-true strategies you've used over the years to: a) stay on budget, b) save on monthly expenses, c) invest/plan/save for the future, and d) live within your means. As most of us know, it can be challenging living on a military budget, particularly in the early years of our careers... so what have you learned that you can pass on; what are those helpful tidbits of wisdom you can share; what are your lessons learned; what did you do right, what did you do wrong; what did you learn from it, and if you had to do it all over again, what would you do differently? Please feel free to share any articles, quotations, excerpts, links, or anything else necessary to help illustrate your point(s). Well, this should be an interesting and thoroughly helpful discussion, so let's get things started; thank you for all that you do, and... wishing you all the best and continued success!