One thing my wife and I have been doing of late is the Envelope method. At the start of every month we take 4,000 nis out of the bank and put in envelopes for different uses. So some is marked “Food”, Some “Pessach”, “Clothing”, “Vacation” and so on.
There are a few good points to this plan:
1) We know how much we want to spend on each topic, and how much we have spent.
2) We agree in advance. If there is 500nis in the “Kids clothing” envelope and my wife goes and buys clothes from the kids, I won’t be mad at her, we agreed to it! (or vice versa)
3) Money is saved in Advance for things, We stared the Pessach envelope 3 months ahead of time.
Its nice to not fight about money!