Budgetting Is Not For The Faint Of Heart

I am finally back in the real world after a short vacation/disappearance from reality. Logan came to visit and we went to PA to chill for a few days. But on with what I wanted to quickly talk about at this moment. Recently I found a blog. titled That Wife, that I decided I liked enough to follow and I wanted to highlight one of her posts. I found this post interesting as budgeting, spending, and good money habits is something I have been studying a bit for the past year. In fact me and Jon read Total Money Makeover soon after we started dating. I found this posting about budgeting interesting because instead of starting off with a specific amount for each category and trying to stick to it, they built up their budget. I kind of like this idea because I think its more exciting to see money build and this is an easier way for one to see it accrue. I also love how they included the categories gifts and electronics as I think those would be easy categories to forget about.

Another idea that Jon and I have thought of is giving each person a certain amount of money each month for personal use. The only problem I see from it is that we may have trouble coming up with what is considered personal use. If Jon eats out for work because he feels like it would help his career is that personal use or not? And if not, and it happens a few times a week, should I get a similar amount to use outside of my personal budget? Where does the equality begin and end? Could we say that he can use funds to eat out with coworkers a few times a week and I get a bigger budget for clothing as we know girls spend more on clothes anyways?

What I don't want to happen is for someone to forgo something they want and perhaps need because someone else within the couple spent money that they may not necessarily need to (this is in no way related to example above). I also want each month to end with savings once all initial debt is paid off. And it would be nice to not feel like we are scrimping all the time so that we wont be tired of that feeling come time we actually need to tighten our budget a lot, though I know this wish may be unrealistic.

Any ideas or different budget models that you've seen, liked, and perhaps even used?