Decide Your Budget

Decide Your Budget
Your engagement ring budget needs to represent what makes sense now. The ring should definitely WOW her, but being in massive debt isn't all that romantic.

Engagement Ring Budget: How do you decide upon your engagement ring budget when the ring may be shown to your entire community? It's the love, not the price that matters.

The tremendous responsibility riding on your engagement ring budget decision can make the purchase feel overwhelming. The ring represents your willingness to commit deeply, for life, to a man or woman in front of your shared community. There’s plenty of pressure to spend a lot because the diamond, analogous to a dowry, may be flashed around by your fiancé before family and friends. Though many jewelers have adopted a De Beers narrative, advising that an engagement ring should cost two months of salary; these days, this obviously doesn’t make sense, especially if you are carrying loans or starting out on a new job.


The money you pay for an engagement ring is not what makes it special. Rather, it’s the love that the ring represents.

Whether size matters to him/her or not, the sparkle in the gold or platinum is seductive and it may be difficult to figure out all the various factors around purchasing an engagement ring.

If this is your first entry into the wild jewelry world you will encounter a terminology that you’ve never heard before: grading letters, slight inclusion verses very slight prongs verses split mounts, palladium verse platinum, gemstones with varying degree of hardness and qualities and even caret vs. karat.

The terminology itself is arcane. Work with a company that has a reputation you can trust. The lifeblood of successful jewelers is the relationships they have with their customers.

Before you even visit a store to choose an engagement ring and ultimately the wedding ring set, it’s best to consider your budget carefully. Your wedding and engagement rings will probably be the most important jewelry purchase in your life. You’ll wear your rings every day and they may become the most enduring symbol of your marriage. It is worth getting something that will WOW your partner, yet having a large credit card debt when you are starting out your marriage is not all that romantic.

Once you have decided your budget, a good custom jeweler can work with you to meet it. For example, here at Reflective Jewelry, silver and gold two-tone rings are a lot less expensive than white and yellow gold two-tone. In some cases, as in white gold, it is better to go with the less expensive option, 14K versus 18K, because 14K white gold is harder and whiter. Some people are totally set on platinum, but palladium is an excellent and less expensive alternative as we explain in our guide to white metals

The basic rule is, just buy what feels right. Don’t delay getting your engagement ring in order to purchase a more expensive diamond. Whatever you give to your beloved represents where you are at this moment in your life. The money you pay for an engagement ring is not what makes it special. Rather, it’s the love that the ring represents.

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since 2015

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