I think this skips the biggest source of tension in my household with regards to money. The only way I know to describe that is 'it's worth less to you than to me'.
For instance, I would tomorrow gladly outsource the entirety of our laundry work to a service. It would be much cheaper than other monthly expenses we have that I value much less highly. But my wife has shot that down. She has all manner of reasons why its not a good idea and none of them are related to the bare economics of the problem.
As academic economics has found, so does my family, the models need to be sensitive to lots of data that is not captured in price to make reasoning about these things workable.
Have you considered something like asking for laundry service as a birthday gift?
My wife and I have similar spending patterns, but if we had different valuations on something, I would want to be able to talk about it (express my desire), show a willingness to compromise (in exchange of a birthday gift) but in a way that respected her valuation.
For instance, I would tomorrow gladly outsource the entirety of our laundry work to a service. It would be much cheaper than other monthly expenses we have that I value much less highly. But my wife has shot that down. She has all manner of reasons why its not a good idea and none of them are related to the bare economics of the problem.
As academic economics has found, so does my family, the models need to be sensitive to lots of data that is not captured in price to make reasoning about these things workable.