i spoke to 2 people recently about diamonds. one told me that her 1 karat rock that her husband bought for her 5 years ago is now worth 2.5k more than before. the other person spoke to me about how when he was shopping for an engagement ring for his wife, someone showed him historical prices of diamonds for the different tiers and how prices have consistently gone up. i've never heard of or met anyone who's resold their diamonds but somehow i was led to believe that diamonds are not terrible "investments", much like gold.
however, i haven't been convinced that a legalized marriage has financial benefits over 2 partners staying legally single. i might be wrong but i am always under the impression there's a marriage penalty when filing your taxes.
what are your thoughts on this?
Good on you for resisting the material, acquisitive mentality of most soon-to-be-marrieds.
James, you bring up an interesting point. My understanding is that the so-called "marriage penalty" depends a lot on how much each parter earns. I'm sorry I can't track down a citation at the moment, but I think if both partners make around the same amount, it's better for tax purposes to be unmarried. But if one partner earns a lot more than the other, it's better to be married. If you're interested in this stuff see unmarried.org.
*quietly cheers*
Great post... thanks for sharing.
When I was planning my proposal to my future wife, I decided early on to avoid the diamond ring. With all that one hears about diamonds supporting slave labor, I didn't want to put my money there.
The more I thought about it, I realized I wanted to do something different. So I spent several months looking for an antique carnival glass pitcher that went with some tumblers she inherited from her grandmother.
She loved it, as well as the blue topaz ring I gave her that matched her eyes.
Happy life journey together! My husband purchased a very simple, small engagement ring. It just didn't make fiscal sense to either of us to spend hundreds, much less thousands of dollars. What we did do was focus on our wedding bands by having them engraved on the inside with a meaningful message and our wedding date. Now that we've had babies I can tell you that the engagement ring is put away, because as small as it is, it snags on sweaters, hair, and most intolerable of all, it scratches baby skin.
By the way, I've heard Suze Orman recommend not buying jewelry for investment purposes.
I don't want a diamond ring either because 1) slave labor (as another poster mentioned) and 2) I don't want my guy to spend the money. I feel like I've outgrown the whole diamong engagement ring thing. It seems a little like the remnant of childhood fantasy. Besides that, I was once engaged and reselling that diamond was HARD. AND I only got half what he paid for it. So I never heard of diamond rings appreciating.
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