Engagement rings -- in Britain and Australia

There is an article here which comments on an English woman who was disappointed that her high-earning fiance gave her an engagement ring that he paid only £1,300 ($2600.00) for.

It got a lot of comments from readers, with not a few of them telling the man he has had a lucky escape and that he should dump her forthwith.  That is certainly my view.

A lot of Australian women went online to say that their ring had cost very little and they liked it that way.  They said the love they had between them and their partner was the thing that mattered. And that is hard to argue with.

The man in the matter has not yet been heard from so I thought I might mention some of the reasons he might have had.  For a small sum, I bought my lady in one of my four marriages a secondhand zirconia that would have been worth thousands had it been a real diamond.  And the lady was happy with that.  Without using special equipment you cannot tell a zirconia from a diamond so she was happy with the social appearance of the ring.  She had an evasive answer ready if anyone asked her directly what it was.  And it is in general crude and boastful to proclaim the cost of a ring anyway.  So unless you are tasteless, it is pointless to buy an expensive ring.

But what about the value of the ring as an investment?  The huge point about that is that what you get on resale will be only a fraction of what it cost.  It is just about the worst imagineable investment.  So wise advice would be to buy a pretty ring with semi-precious stones that you can happily show around -- and use the rest of your left-over cash on a real investment -- or just throw a bigger party.

A young couple I know bought a pretty secondhand ring for $500 -- because both wanted to save all they could to buy their own home.  I wonder that everyone does not do that.

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