Our solution was to sit down and decide what amount and cadence of "fun money" we can safely allocate to ourselves, and we can save or spend that individually.

In our case we have very different spending habits - I love to get a fairly regular coffee-shop latte & croissant, or fancy restaurant meals with friends, and similar things that savings gurus tell you will prevent you from ever retiring (my spouse's point of view).

My partner likes to spend way too much (imo) on "toys" once or twice a year.

We spent way too much time being obnoxiously judgemental at each other before we did the math and discovered each spending pattern works out almost exactly the same in aggregate over a year or two. Now we just set that aside and there's no judging because we know that the amount spent averages out to under what we decided was reasonable.

My wife and I do the same thing. 99% of the time the answer from the other is "Yeah go for it, I don't care". But there has been occasions where one, usually my wife, says "we might want to wait on that" or something to that effect. It's worked for us for 20+ years.

Not being snarky: What's the alternative? Like, what would happen if you didn't do that?

I ask because my wife and I spend money however we like, and I think it'd be quite strange if she checked in with me before spending $150. Is there some useful context or previous over-spending that you're solving, or is it something you'd recommend for everyone?

This is also how my wife and I approach our money. We don't stop each other from having fun but we're aware of any big spending before it happens.

You can still have personal budgets, even if they are very small. Heck, when things are tight, even having 10 Euro personal "fun money" a month for each partner can give a bit of freedom.

I guess this is a problem only in USA. In Europe, the education is inexpensive enough with government funding and some effort from the child(which eventually pays back). Holiday vacations are usually for the whole family or organized by the school so this is planned expense. And in my opinion most of the expensive "toys" are usually not good for the child, like giving a sever year old an iPad/iPhone. I prefer to go with toys that spark creativity which usually are less expensive. That is not to say I would not buy expensive toys, however I believe that they should be given as rewards for memorable achievements or and to teach them what investment is. However I do admit that during the first five years the expenses for a child are huge, because most things have very short utilization lifespan - strollers, clothes, furniture, toys etc.

Instead of shared money with personal allowances, which works in constricting manner, we have shared goals approach to which we contribute whenever and however we can, which works in contributing manner. And we try to keep our budget aligned with our forecast for the goal or we reevaluate the forecast in case of unforeseen circumstances like the COVID pandemic. Of course we don't hit all of our targets but with time we get better at evaluating. Also any unspent money from a missed goal start as base for another goal.

I have a one year old, and I grew up poor. We still don't have a lot. But at some point you don't have a money management issue, you have an income issue.