1. We do NOT review our spending together each month. I tried to do that at first, and my partner's eyes (he's the free spirit, let's live-in-the-now person) would start to glaze over or he'd get really fixated on a random detail (i.e., "we went $30 over on groceries last month... that must mean we can't buy ANY groceries this month! We must be destitute!"). I, on the other hand, check Mint every day, several times a day, so I always know where we stand. I update him throughout the month on a few details ("only $50 left in the grocery budget this month, so let's focus on eating what we have"). I do think it's important that we both know where our money is and what we're doing with it (esp. should I die first), so we do talk about any big decisions ("let's pay down student loans before we save for a house") and have semi-annual financial updates ("we just paid $10,000 down on our student loans in 5 months!"). But he basically trusts me to handle all the financial decisions and keep him in the loop as needed.
2. My partner and I each have personal checking and savings accounts in addition to our joint accounts. Everything we make is deposited into our joint accounts, and each month a personal allowance is automatically transferred to each of our checking accounts. We also have an agreement wherein if one of us manages to bring in a little extra (e.g., working overtime), that person can take some of that windfall for personal money. We continually renegotiate this windfall rule depending on our current circumstances -- when both of us had full-time employment [we're also full-time-plus students, so our schedules change a lot], we decided we were "allowed" to take 50% of our after-tax overtime money for personal spending if we wanted to [although we frequently just redirected it to joint spending].
We can spend our personal money however we want, and neither of us has a say in how the other spends it. Neither of us has access to the other person's personal bank accounts. If we don't spend it all in one month, we can save it to buy gifts, etc. I'm aware that if we eliminated some of this personal spending allowance and just agreed on everything, we might hit FI sooner, but at this point, I consider the personal allowance more of a cost-of-doing-business (i.e., marriage). It definitely keeps the peace, and by not arguing over the smaller details, we stay aligned and in agreement on the big ones.