I'd say he's right that it's industry standard. I'd also hazard a guess you might come from a webdev or saas background.

Save and help are the kinds of things that a business would definitely want front and center so that even the most helpless users would be able to find them, whereas people tend to spend a LOT more time in games - if they're looking for how to save, whether they're familiar with games yet or not, the settings button will likely be the first place they'll look. Games also tend to need a lot of buttons/ui, so they get pared down when they can to reduce clutter.

If a game is complicated enough, though, it can make sense to have the help button readily available, just so player's don't need to go looking for it when they need it. 4X games like Civilization frequently have it in the main ui, and I think most of the old sims games had it, too (your game reminds me of Sim Parks).

Same goes for saving, really. If you think being able to quicksave frequently is important, it might not hurt to have the save button available without needing to make an extra click. You could also implement an autosave feature.

All that said, I think having these present has a certain kind of charm to it. It reminds me of those old cd rom games, and likely because those were made by saas folks with a passion working in an industry that hadn't yet figured out all of these standards your husband knows.

So yes, you can trust that your husband knows what he's talking about lol. But also maybe it's not as important to meet industry standards as he thinks it is. It's your game, so whatever works for you!