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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   3598 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 4, 2022

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Does anyone have any general advice on picking an engagement ring? I'll be proposing soon and I honestly have no idea where to start. I assume that walking into a local jewelry store is the easiest way to do this but also by far the most expensive. Is there a better way?

I talked to a couple of my married friends and got a recommendation for a guy. Cross check the price of stones but you are going to get screwed a pretty industry standard level any reasonable place you go. You're committing to spend your life with someone, don't let the ring be the thing you spend the most time thinking about. The ring vender will do a consultation and walk you through the 4Cs of diamonds or whatever, balance the different factors to your taste and pick a setting that fits you/her style broadly. I like simple stuff so hers was very simple with a striking stone. Your budget is going to define a lot of this and the person you're buying the ring from should be able to frankly work with you. There is a little bit of haggling involved depending on the type of store you're at, you'll have to read the room on that but you're talking more on the order of 5-10% than 50%.

My now-husband let me lead the ring shopping in a way. We discussed prices, band material, and stones and went to jewelry stores together to figure out what I like when it comes to size, style, and material (read - color). I didn’t point to a ring and say, “this one,” but I did pick a few as at least examples for him. He ended up choosing one of those we both really liked. I was still surprised by his choice (though it was my #1) and his proposal. Proposals are memorable, special moments even without being a surprise.

I recommend this method if your future fiancé is amenable to it. Don’t go fiddling in the dark about something she may be wearing for the rest of her life.

Use your eyes and ears. Learn what your GF wants. Is she a fan of perfect weddings with color themes, strict dress codes, multi-layered cakes, hundreds of guests, the whole shebang? Then you are probably stuck with a diamond ring. If she wants a small wedding or an unusual wedding (and by that I mean she reacts positively when one of you brings up someone else's such wedding), then you can try something different with a ring as well, an heirloom ring is always a good option.

Is there a better way?

Yes, there is a better way - spending your money on something of actual value.

If gf wants a diamond, explain to her history and present of diamond industry, explain to her the masterful psyop that equated love with gifting your monthly wage (formerly, now it is supposed to be three months) to mafia yakuza drug cartel De Beers corporation.

gf still wants a diamond?

Explain to her that you cannot sell a diamond except at 90% loss (if lucky), explain that diamond is not investment that appreciates, that diamond is not store of value, that diamond is pure money sink.

gf still wants a diamond?

Explain to her that cubic zirconium indistinguishable from diamond provides all benefits of diamond (impressing some species of birds and people with bird brains who are impressed with bright shiny things and being prime target for criminals) at 1/100 price.

gf still wants a diamond?

Replace gf, unless you want to be slave of TV advertising for life.

De Beers and the Diamond companies might have pulled a fast one, but they did so successfully. The real important dynamic is not between her and the De Beers company but between her and her female friends/family. If she's the type to relish rubbing the pointlessness of diamonds into the faces of her friends and family that ask about the ring, more power to her. But if she is only going to give those stock answers when the subject comes up and secretly be ashamed of her cubic zirconium ring, even though the savings went into buying a car or having a thousand better meals, then you're making a meaningful tradeoff here even if doing what is locally best for you benefits some assholes with a monopoly.

Kind people of the Motte, do not follow this person's advice. The fact that it ends with "dump your fiancee over not holding this particular fringe view" may clue you in to how very bad of advice it is. If your girl wants a diamond ring then you go get a suitable one.

This terrible advice. An engagement ring is a gift. And when you are giving a gift, it doesn't matter what you think. What matters is what the recipient would like/value. If she wants a diamond, you get her a diamond regardless of what you personally think on the subject.

This is excellent advice for anyone who is currently engaged to and planning on marrying a man. All of those rational explanations will be very convincing if we make the one small assumption that his fiance is, in fact, a bearded adult male who will nod sagely and propose to spend the money on matching rifles and a sensible investment portfolio instead.

Unfortunately it may not be the best route to avoiding hurt feelings if he's for some reason planning on marrying a woman.

Yes, quality firearms are solid store of value at worst, appreciating asset at best, unlike shiney stones ;-)

BTW, do not mistake me for dour puritan hating all luxury, there is nothing wrong with jewelry - trad gold and silver that serves as store of value for bad times, not modern diamond fraud.

Forgive my rant, I know that there are much worse thing going on in the world than diamond industry, but this particular scam somehow triggers me.

(even many hard right wingers feel this way, you do not have to be leftist (if you see me as leftist) to despise such business)

https://www.peakstupidity.com/index.php?post=378

https://www.peakstupidity.com/index.php?post=379

https://www.peakstupidity.com/index.php?post=380

Well apparently if her feelings are hurt by this approach you should dump her. So... it won't be a problem for long I guess? But it is an excellent fast track approach for staying single, so I guess there's that.

-- Zeroth rule: A lot of women will put special meaning on her engagement ring, even if you upgrade it later, even if she say she doesn't. If she's just a basic bitch (no shade) who wants a big solitaire real-diamond rock on a band, give it to her. The money you "save" on tricks is nothing compared to whatever fraction of what the divorce would cost you can be assigned to inserting a bone of contention into your relationship this early. You're here to make her happy, not you.

-- Ignore Carats, they're a giant scam, they measure the weight of the center stone which nobody cares about. They're a bad way of measuring visual size, how large it looks on her finger, which is what she/her friends she's showing the ring to care about. Cut, design, arrangement, setting, and the size of your fiancee/her finger are going to matter just as much if not more than caratweight. Carats cost money, going up a quarter or a half carat in center stone weight will cost vastly more than achieving a similar visual effect by other means. Add a clever spray of little stones all around a .75, it will look much bigger than a 1 or even a 1.5, at a much cheaper price. It's pretty shiny jewelry, the goal is to look at it, not weigh it. My wife's ring is either just under or just over a carat center stone, I don't recall which, but it's an old fashioned mine cut diamond in a vintage art deco setting, and she has tiny child-bride fingers, so people look at it and go "Oh My God that thing is enormous! It's gorgeous!"

-- Speaking of tiny child-bride fingers, get your wife's ring size RIGHT. I thought I knew my wife's, we'd made a gag of asking her ring size during intimate moments for years. Turns out it was two sizes smaller than she thought it was, and the ring I bought had to be sized down repeatedly, and only kinda worked while requiring significant re-engineering. My jeweler's exact words were: did you marry a child bride? Settings only work within certain size ranges, and getting it right the first time is much better than any alternative.

-- Speaking of jewelers, I had a long family and friends relationship with the jeweler I purchased the ring from. He knew I was looking for a vintage art deco ring, and when one came in from an estate and my mother happened to be there to get a watch band sized he gave it to her to take home and show me, no deposit. If your family (or her family, or your boss, or his wife, etc) has such a relationship, work with that jeweler. If you don't have that kind of relationship, go on Etsy or go to Costco, but don't go to a jeweler you'll get fucked. It's just how it works. And for God's sake, don't go to one of the big chain jewelers. Zales or Jared is going give you absolute shit, Tiffany or Cartier might have something nice for @GrandBurdensomeCount but unless you're going to drop $$$$$$ you'll end up with something tiny compared to what you could have gotten elsewhere.

-- Determine her stone preferences. Colored precious stones, sapphires and rubies and emeralds, can be beautiful and majestic {Diana's ring from Charles for example} and much cheaper than diamonds; but you have to find out if she'll like that. Lab created diamonds are cheaper, subs like moissanite cheaper still (and often better!) but a lot of people will want a "real" diamond for an engagement ring. Call it marketing, call it superstition, but some people will reject anything "fake" being in their marriage ceremony. Find out what she finds acceptable, work from there.

-- Related to the carats thing, choose elaborate designs and settings over solitaires or triptychs. Solitaires, and simple tripart settings, highlight nothing but the size and quality of the diamond, they just demonstrate how much money you spent. An elaborate setting will look great, and more importantly it will make the ring harder to price for her/others. If you buy a solitaire it's a rock on a band, everyone knows what it costs for that size, it's just a dick measuring contest. If you buy an elaborate art-deco vintage design, nobody knows what it costs, they can't measure it easily. Think of it as the difference between three guys pulling up in BMWs: one guy is in a brand new base model 3 series, the second is in a brand new M3, the third is in a mint condition vintage 1975 2002. You can definitely say the guy in the M3 is richer than the guy in the base model, but you can't really say the guy in the 2002 is poorer than one or either. Even if you know how much it cost, the guy might just like it better than the modern M3 anyway.

-- Don't judge your fiancee for what she wants. Don't be one of those assholes who "well actually..."'s her out of what she wants and into what you want. And don't try to trick her by getting a diamond substitute without talking to her about it. You'll probably get away with it for a while, but oooh boy you can get in trouble once she finds out.

If you buy a solitaire it's a rock on a band, everyone knows what it costs for that size, it's just a dick measuring contest.

However if you have a big dick...

Then you'd buy her a pre-engagement ring that's a chip of diamond on a sterling silver band, and she won't care because it wasn't the budget she wanted stretched.

Personally, I did some shopping around on my own, and picked out something I thought my wife would like. Then I took her ring shopping, but went to other stores. That way I could see what kind of style ring she liked, without tipping my hand as to what exactly she might get.

Some might say that it should be a surprise, but IMO if you guys are ready to get married it shouldn't be that much of a surprise when you get engaged. The specific time and place can be a surprise of course, but it shouldn't be a shock that you're proposing at all. So I don't think you really ruin the surprise that much if you take your girlfriend shopping to get ideas.

I bought a lab sapphire set in gold on Etsy for a few hundred dollars and my fiance loved it (it was a surprise). Your mileage may vary.

Overall I found that the products from companies like Blue Nile were way overpriced and what was reasonably priced was not very aesthetic. The selection on Etsy was much better IMO.

Get help from your beloved on the basics does she want a solitaire, what metal to use for the ring, maybe some cut suggestions, does she want a traditional diamond or something more experimental etc.

Blue nile has lower markups and lots more possibilities for stone options but when I was shopping only a few settings.

Pay for cut then carats, first and worry less about clarity and color until you go down several grades. The difference between excellent clarity and colorless and good clarity and slight color are mostly noticed by jewelers while a good cut will have more brilliance and make the light more eye-catching.

Going just under a round number (0.49 or 0.99 or 1.49 or 1.99 carats cuts the price more than it should) is a good way to save a little bit more when you're close.

I don't have much advice about picking out a ring, but I do want to drop this data- spending more on an engagement ring is correlated with a higher likelihood of divorce. Obviously this probably is not because more expensive rings cause divorce, but it's worth pointing to as a reason not to stress out too much about the process of buying a ring(I am assuming that buying a more expensive ring correlated quite strongly with putting more import on the ring, but I feel like that assumption is sort of a null hypothesis).

https://www.nbcnews.com/better/business/diamonds-aren-t-forever-why-cheaper-engagement-rings-may-mean-ncna892266

Depends a lot on who you're proposing to. My own advice would be to establish a budget, discuss that budget with your desired spouse, and then have them participate in ring selection. This may be accomplished in more- and less-obfuscated ways, depending on how much of a "surprise" your desired spouse is going to insist on feeling when you pop the question. But my own experience is that people who value emotional moments like sudden surprise over communication, transparency, and mutual fulfillment are off to a rough start anyway.

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