What’s important is that she likes it and that it not look cheap. Carat weight,cut, and color matter, and that’s worth paying for, as well as an attractive setting. If it looks cheap, you better be sooo poor and love her so much that she will feel that you made big sacrifice in any case to get it for her. She may like to show it to her friends, so make sure it passes those tests. On this thread, multiples of salary are ridiculous - either people are unemployed at the multiple of 3x0=0 or they are and the salaries are sufficiently high that you’ll be looking for rings that are in excess of $15k.
frisian>>> I love your wife. I hate the whole diamond thing. It’s the biggest piece of bull and the backlash is coming. In the next 10-20 years or so I recon the diamond industry will be dead. The cartels over and diamonds will be selling for 1/10th their current value and the $30 000k ring you got will be worth about $2 000 and if they get the synthetic right you’ll be able to get a rock the size of your fist for 5 bucks and then nobody will want diamonds because people only want the because they are expensive.
If she isn’t happy with your choice of ring then you have time to back out of it. Its just a ring. Luckily I have a girlfriend hates jewelry and thinks it is a waste. We’ve been dating for almost a year now. She prefers an experience as a present. We went away for her birthday a few months ago and now we are traveling for mine.
Four C’s Character, Capacity, Covenants, Collateral. make sure you assess all those before even thinking about the 4 C’s of diamonds.
The ring industry is already struggling. There are fewer oligarchs buying high end inidividual pieces - price deflation is already forcing some mines to close and putting a dampener on the rest of the industry. I’m wondering how long I can hold out for before prices come down.
jut111 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Four C’s Character, Capacity, Covenants, > Collateral. > > make sure you assess all those before even > thinking about the 4 C’s of diamonds. *5, Cost
I loved it when my girlfriend said “buy me a cheap ring and we can use the remainder for our first place or go on a nice vacation, I would probably lose the ring anyway and I would probably only wear the band” So why spend $$$ to please her family and friends ?? FU$$ that. I’ll still get something decent, but nothing way out there.
The only safe way to do it is to do the dummy ring and giver her a budget with a sentimental explanation for having a budget in the first place. Then go with her to make sure the salespeople don’t have their wooly ways with her. If you aren’t buying a diamond in the diamond district in NYC through a friend of a friend you are paying way too much.
My advice is don’t be cheap with the quality of ring for her but still shop around for the best price. Girls love diamonds, they love how they look, they love showing it off to their friends. You don’t need 2-3 months of salary but most people ive known spent 8-12k on engagement rings.
The correct answer: Do not get married. Game over
I lucked out, My wife is a professional metalsmith / jeweler and thinks diamonds are an overpriced scam. Engagement ring was a diamond band, more sentimental than monetary as it came from great-grandmother, but wedding band is something a friend made for us. Pawn shops are a great place to look at this time. A lot of really quality merchandise at reasonable prices, if you can get past the feeling that maybe you are taking advantage of someone else’s misfortune. Although you have to be careful about what you are actually getting. Otherwise, KarenC is right get what makes her feel special and happy, don’t buy on price alone.
Years before getting married, when my wife and I were still dating, I made it clear that I was far too shrewd to go into debt or deplete my savings for an engagement ring. If she wanted a massive rock then she was wasting her time. When we got married in 2007 we had X dollars for a wedding / ring / honeymoon. I basically gave her total control of how X was allocated. She ended up with a diamond wedding band, we did a low profile wedding at the Dallas Arboretum, and had a fantastic honeymoon in Maui. No regrets.
I bought from bluenile.com You’ll get a lot more for your money than the chain stores, and a little more than the mom and pop places. It kinda depends on what the lady wants. I got lucky because she doesn’t really care what the ring looks like under a microscope as long as it looks good on her hand. Some women see the small imperfections under a microscope and freak out. If you have one of those, get ready to go broke. I looked at a TON of diamonds, and here’s my experience with the 4 C’s Cut Ideal or Very Good. This is the most important and you don’t skimp here. I bought Ideal. Color I can’t tell the difference in a D and a G so I got the cheaper G. H looks good by itself, but might show some yellow-ness if held next to a nicer diamond, or something perfectly white like a piece of printer paper. Clarity This is a place where diamond stores bend you over. I bought a SI2, which is the lowest grade Blue Nile carries. But clarity is a pretty tricky property. Clarity has to do with the size of imperfections, but not all imperfections are created equal. There are black imperfections that are easy to see, and white/clear imperfections that are not easy to see. Regardless of the color of imperfections, they’re priced almost the same. This is total bull crap, so save money on a lower clarity grade, but get white/clear imperfections. There are also multiple types of imperfections, so look at the GIA diamond report on bluenile.com and go to the diagram that shows the diamond. Clouds are pretty much invisible to the naked eye unless they’re huge. Whisps/feathers are similar. Look for diamonds where they aren’t in the middle, but kinda off to the side. Crystals are ugly. Small ones that look like a single dot are really hard to see. Big ones that look like a small circle will be visible and should be avoided. If imperfections are located near the edge of the diamond, they can be hidden by a prong, so its ok to have imperfections that are away from the middle. Make sure you call blue nile on the phone and ask them if the diamond is “eye-clean.” They’ll suggest moving to a VS2 clarity grade when you say eye clean. Don’t do it. You want the biggest eye clean diamond you can afford, and moving pu to VS2 is going to shrink what you can afford faster than skinny dipping in the arctic. Carat Once you take care of the other three, this pretty much depends on your budget. I will say though, that carat is weight, not size. Look at the actual size in millimeters. I looked at three diamonds of equal weight, and bought the one that looks the biggest when facing up (largest diameter). The others would have been taller if viewed from the side, but that’s not how she’s going to show it off to her mom, sister, and your ex-girlfriend. Buy ahead of time. Its a big purchase, so if you don’t like what you get, you can swap it or get a refund, but that takes time. They have to make sure you didn’t mail a fake back for your refund.
You should spend at 3 months of unemployment checks.
tvPM Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > disagree. You get huge appreciation out of > diamonds, just not monetary. Happy fiancee, > jealous friends, its all about the ego when it > comes down to rings. Sorry to be mean but if your finance gets off by her friends being jealous over a ring its time to find another one. Spending all that money is such a waste in my opinion. My mom’s ring is not even a diamond (in Europe at the time it was fine to have a nice say… amethyst) its the ring continuum that provides the symbolism, not the $ you shell our. My ring was $7 at the local mall silver cart. My husbands cost $12. The XXXX we saved was spent on travel. Believ me- ppl will be more interested about your 3 month trip to SE asia than the shiny rock.
akanska, you’re too good to be real
Akanska’s real and you can tell because she has a major imperfection - she’s already taken.
Arkansas: 1) its Fiancee, not Finance (got CFA on the brain?) 2) My wife doesn’t care too much abot the diamond (she returned the 2.5ct for something smaller as she thought it was too much), and she seems to dig her $120 plain white gold wedding band more, and often just wears that. It doesn’t erase the fact that friends get jealous seeing a nice ring on someone when they don’t have one, whether its a big diamond, amethyst, or whatever. 3)Spending a ton of money can be a waste. However, I would keep in mind that your wife will be wearing this most days for the rest of her life(hopefully), so make sure you get her something that she would be proud and happy to wear.
“The correct answer: Do not get married. Game over” Yup.
I’m going to put in 25 minutes of overtime at work today so I can make enough money to propose to akanska.