Hold, at my house we were doing the one-income thing for 9 months, and I can tell you there's nothing more of a buzz kill to start brainstorming what we'd like to do, and come up with nothing, because everything was "too expensive." It felt like that power and control thing rearing it's ugly head again, yuck! When we shifted from that all-or-nothing thinking, and gave ourselves a reasonable amount to work with, even like $30, there were lots of things we came up with, and then when it was something free, it was a bonus, something we decided together, not something one was pushing on the other.

In the last year or so I've made a few friends similar to your wife, for whatever reason just don't buy into the "everyone's got to work" thing like the rest of us do. They complain that their Hs don't give them money for one thing or another, and to me the answer would be so obvious, that's what a job is for, so you have enough resources to go around. Or like, if they cooked dinner instead of getting take-out, there would be another $20/day easily. So sometimes we meet for coffee instead of lunch, or at one of our houses, or go for a walk at the park. We're still able to do fun stuff, and it doens't feel like we're doing it "on the cheap."