Married guys - car budgets and honesty

For mine and I, I am the sole provider. She does an excellent job taking care of everything with the kids and the general logistics of keeping our life comfortable. Although she does WAY more than me at home, I manage the bills. We are somewhat old-school in that we don't have debit cards and rarely use a credit card for "normal" shopping expenses. We work on a cash budget for our weekly life spending. Neither one of us feels as though we have to ask for permission to spend money for our own personal hobby/needs. Its more of a "do we have the extra 4 so I can do/get this?" kind of thing with both of us. We don't ask each other's permission, just if the funds will allow it. We always put the kids and house first. After tax and bonus time this Spring, I might finally get to have the seats in the Fury done - been on the road appearing finished form the outside and underside for 11 yrs, but still need to get the seats done. It doesn't help that in those 11 yrs, we had 2 more kids we weren't expecting (another story for another thread), bought then upgraded to a bigger camper, 1/2 sponsored Jake's 65 B'cuda build, added 600 sq ft to the house upstairs... My seats still aren't done......Life happens.

We have not kept money secrets from each other. She knows how much I spend and I know how much she spends. We both know how much I make, and that I'll need a wheel barrow to bring home my bonus check next week. Even when she worked in Jake's elementary school before quitting when his little brother popped out, She would let me know when she wanted to but something extra and we didn't even rely on that little bit of money coming in. I guess our thinking on it is if we just wanted to do our own thing all the time, why be together in the first place? Everybody is different, but for us, the my money/her money thing wouldn't work. One home, one family, one money, open communication.