Asking someone to marry you is easily the biggest heart-in-mouth moment of your natural life. Even if you are almost certain to know the answer, you still feel the tension as your chosen date of proposal grows nearer, and even if your engagement ring is already there waiting. Of course, if it isn’t, then your second-biggest heart-in-mouth moment is just about here. How on earth should you approach buying an engagement ring?!
- Assessing Your Financial Situation
The very first step in this process, and an unavoidable step at that, is to take stock of your own financial situation. This is, of course, a shrewd thing to do regularly, regardless of your intentions to make a major one-off investment – but if this is the reason that you take a closer look at your finances, then all the better.
The purpose of doing this is to establish a couple of things. Firstly, you’re finding out your savings situation, and what of your savings (if any) you can put towards something like an engagement ring. You’re also looking at your incoming, savings potential and future – giving you an idea of what you can offer in the longer term.
- Understanding the Average Costs
Engagement rings come in all different forms, from austere promise bands to ostentatious multi-gem finger-parties. These different varieties of rings all command vastly different prices, but within their own lane can be predictably priced within specific ranges.
Diamond rings are a great example, given the various gradings and charts against which the gem itself can be examined. There are four ‘C’s in diamonds that dictate their desirability and value: cut, clarity, colour and carat. All of these have price implications depending on how a diamond fares, and ultimately influences the end cost of your dream engagement ring.
- Setting Priorities and Making Compromises
This is the point where you start making the real decisions. Knowing what money you have available to you, and knowing the deciding factors in a given ring’s financial value, you can start to think carefully about your wants and needs in an engagement ring – and those of your partner’s. If the sentiment matters more than the looks, you can safely choose any budget ring with a sentimental element to it, but otherwise you’ll need to decide what facets of a ring appeal to you the most – and how important they are for you to have on you and your partner’s fingers.
- Exploring Financing Options
If you’re all-but settled on your ideal ring, but still find yourself falling short on the financial front, this isn’t necessarily a reason to give up and compromise. You may be able to, with great care, use financing options to pay for the rings over time. Don’t walk into such an arrangement without a great deal of forethought and planning, though, or your proposal could be much more expensive than the initial cost of the rings.
