Menu Planning Strategy

I know lots of people already menu plan, but I do it a little differently. I don't create a menu for each night of the week. I just write down a dinner for each night that we need a meal. If we have plans of some sort that might interfere with cooking time, I make a * in one of the spaces to show myself that I need to plan something quick and easy for that night, or I need to do a crock pot meal. I make my grocery list based on my meal plan.






I make sure to write a few extra meals in, just in case. We are at an overseas military base, and it is very rare that the commissary has everything on my list. One time we went to get groceries and there were no chicken breasts. At all. Having an extra meal or two on the menu plan gives me options. If something I need for a meal isn't in the store, I have an alternative meal. If I decide one day that nothing on my list of meals sounds good, I have a little extra wiggle room to make something different without messing up the whole week. 

The last strategy I use for meal planning is to never PLAN spaghetti, but always have the ingredients to make it on hand. Spaghetti is a meal that inexpensive, the family loves it, and I can make it from frozen ground beef in about half an hour. Sometimes, the day gets away from me. Sometimes, I forget to thaw out dinner. Sometimes, I forget to put dinner in the crockpot. Sometimes... I think you get it! It adds about $5 to my grocery bill to buy the pound of ground beef, noodles, and sauce that we have just in case I can't get a planned dinner on the table. It would cost about $25 to feed my family pizza if I didn't have an emergency plan in place! 

Welcome!!!

Hello new followers, and welcome to my blog! I thought I would start off by telling you a little bit about myself, and what you will find here.
I'm Diana and I'm 26 years old. I have an amazing Air Force husband, and four adorable Air Force brats! We've been a military family for 6 years this month, and we are currently serving overseas in Spain.
Eventually we will be moving back to the states, and hopefully we will be building the home of our dreams! We've got some pretty big dreams, so we have some money saving to do!

Starting a new year means setting new goals for our family's financials. I've been looking everywhere trying to find new ways to save money that I haven't thought of but I haven't had much luck. Many of the lists that I've found include lots of tips that don't apply to our family. We are in the military so we don't have out of pocket health care costs. We are on base so we don't have out of pocket utility costs. We are overseas so we don't have several stores to choose from and price compare.

We also don't want to jeopardize our quality of life. Four kiddos keep me busy enough, so I don't want to be an extreme couponer. I enjoy shopping and purchasing things for our kids and our home, so I don't want to cut out spending. I just want to put money away in savings, and make the very most out of what we have left!

So this blog is my place to share what exactly we are doing in our family to make the most of our money. Maybe it will help some other family. Maybe not. But at least it will keep us accountable!