Engagement ring - getting the most for your money.

If it were me, I would want my fiance to spend about two hundred on the ring and keep the other £1800 in the bank. If we were expecting a baby, I would consider it incredibly frivolous to spend £2,000 on an engagement ring. You can get a perfectly nice and decent quality ring for a couple of hundred pounds.

And you will need a LOT of money when baby comes along. Probably before too! So saving most of that two grand and spending just a couple of hundred on the ring seems to make more sense IMO.

I know it may not be what you asked (or wanted to hear,) but this is a moneysaving page, and this is a moneysaving site.

There are numerous independent jewellers where you could get a nice, decent, unique ring for several hundred.

jaylee3 is right, but left out the part about engagement rings being a scam, a sham, an incredible feat of advertising and marketing that dupes untold millions into wastefully parting with untold billions every year.

I spent about £10 on my wife's engagement ring, and a few days before our wedding we went to a day-market and picked up two plain rings for about £3 (total! Not each!). And if anything, we overspent! No practical use whatsoever.

UNLESS... she's a jewellery nut who spends money on items like necklaces and rings all the time anyway. If rings are something she's interested in, then a couple of hundred on a nice ring might be money well spent. My wife likes spoons, and I've bought her a couple of gold spoons over the years. This is because SHE likes spoons. Not because of some ridiculous "tradition" that started a few decades ago as a way to sell diamonds for stupid prices. :P

Best of luck either way!

It's up to the OP how much they wish to spend on a ring, I'm sure they are aware how much a baby will cost.

I would go to a diamond wholesaler if possible. The chain retailers have a massive mark up on their rings. I know in Belfast we have the likes of the Gardiner Brothers but not sure about the mainland!

Good luck

Buzzybee90 wrote: »

90% of women would be insulted being given a £10 ring.

That's a horrible thing to say. I am quite sure that 90% of women are not that shallow!

If a person commits to another person, to promise to spend the rest of their lives together, to work together through life's challenges, and to grow old together, that's brilliant, and so wonderful and special. But then losing a month's salary on a rock that has been dug out of the ground and literally does nothing that a zirconia can't do is... well, whenever I read about the fact that this new "tradition" continues, I'm staggered. Might as well buy a square kilometer of land on Venus for her (hmmm... that gives me an idea for a marketing campaign!).

£2000 budget? How about £1990 to charity to feed some of the millions of poverty-stricken children or help war refugees, plus a receipt from the charity to prove that you're not so gullible as to be suckered in by an eighty-year-old diamond ad campaign, and a £10 band of metal for her finger (or spend a little more for a built-in compass and GPS tracker! Actually make it useful!).

The ring should be a symbol of love and commitment. Buying a diamond symbolises throwing money away (ask in the Savings & Investments subforum if you're not sure about that). If you are so impressed by shiny things, how about a nice reflective jacket?

Alternatively, instead of popping to a shop and picking up a diamond ring (which anyone with a credit card could do in a minute, and hardly makes you special), actually do something interesting about the ring, like the two of you designing and crafting a truly unique ring together? If you're going to be sheep, be AWESOME sheep! (Plus, you could use the equipment in future to make rings for other people and earn a bit of extra cash, and it will have paid for itself! What a fantastic MSE way to do it!)