Me [35M] with my wife [33F] of 9 years. Her recent obsession with saving money is becoming a major problem for our family.

We've been together for 12 years and married for 9. We have three kids (8F, 6M, 4F).
She's always been more frugal than I have been, but it was never a problem. We always managed to come to agreements and sometimes she was right and sometimes I was right. But recently she's gone to a bit of an extreme.
We're in a good financial situation. She hasn't worked since we had our kids but I make good money and we have no debts except our mortgage which is very reasonable. We'll pay that off in less than 10 years. We're saving about 20% of that income for our retirement (I have no plans to retire early) and we're saving money in college funds for our kids. We'll be able to send them to the best schools and grad schools without a problem.
After all of that, we still have a lot of money left to spend. Of course we're a family of five and there are costs but we can easily afford them and there's always money that is left over. Our problem is not budgeting or being aware of what we spend, rather, it's that she doesn't want to spend almost anything.
She's gone into couponing, she spends at least an hour every day finding, printing and collecting coupons and creating shopping baskets to maximize the use of them. This has reduced our groceries bill for example, but the stuff that we get are not the stuff that we like. Our kids often complain about that and I notice it too. I think it's great to minimize the bills but it shouldn't come at the expense of us not buying things that we'd like.
We have three kids and that's a lot of work. I always help out as much as I can but I know it's a lot of work and we can afford to hire help for her. For example, for cleaning and tidying up the house. I don't want her to do these things and get tired up, if she has an hour I'd rather her relax or go out and have fun, or play with the kids rather than doing housework. I think bringing someone in every couple of days to clean and tidy up the house and do laundry is very reasonable and a huge weight off her and my shoulders. She agrees with the principle, but disagrees that we should spend this money. We should instead save it.
Another example is her car. It's a fine and safe car, but it's a 1999 Honda civic. She bought this before we got married and I have suggested her a few times that it's time for her to get rid of it and get a newer, nicer car. The kids don't like this car, it's not comfortable for them and doesn't compare to the cars that their friends' parents have. But she insists that it's wasting money until she runs it to the ground, and then she can buy another car that's 15+ years old to again, run it to the ground. But we can just buy her a nicer car right now, in cash without any issues. Her phone is the same. She uses an iPhone 4 and always complains about how slow it is and how horrible the battery is. But when I suggest that she can get a newer phone, she says no.
The thing that got me a little frustrated was that I had lunch with my brother yesterday. I paid for his lunch (not an expensive lunch, about $20). She made this an issue and was all about how we shouldn't need to pay for family members. I didn't know but she apparently splits the bill when she goes out with her younger sister who is a student. I think she should just pay it and help her sister out. I could make several other examples, but you can imagine the overall picture.
I've tried several times to do the math with her and figure out how much we're actually saving. For example her couponing on the groceries saves us less than $1000 a year. That's for a family of 5. This saving goes nowhere. Spending the money to buy things we and our kids like more? That's worth a lot more. All of these savings are negligible in the long term. But they don't seem to make a difference to her, it's like she's resisting spending money so hard, and it's getting worse.
I'm just struggling to come to terms and communicate with her about how much this is affecting us as a family and how happier we'd be if she just relaxed a little about it. Any help or advice is appreciated.

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tl;dr: Wife has always been frugal but recently has taken it to a whole new level and it's negatively affecting me and our kids. We're at a good financial position and have everything under control and do not need to save as aggressively as she's been. Struggling to send the message across to her that this obsession is unhealthy and is harmful to our family.


Source.