Crystalline Carbon = Vanity
My younger sisters, let’s talk about diamond engagement rings.
Specifically, I’m talking to those of you who expect your man to follow that jewelry industry marketing bunk about spending two months’ salary on a diamond ring so you can show it off to your girls.
Please. Stop it. Now.
No man, at least no man under 30, has any business spending that kind of money on diamonds, society and sentimentality be damned. And if you’re demanding a rock, then maybe he’d do better not marrying your azz, because you’re likely to be a higher-maintenance model than what he can initially – or want to – afford.
Let’s take the example of Profunksticated. When I decided to get married at 26, I was holding down a gig paying about $25,500 a year. That translates to about $2,125 a month. By that warped jewelry industry logic, I should have spent $4,250 on a diamond ring for the woman who I call The Spouse.
Keep in mind I was living here in the always-expensive DMV, so my savings were hovering between squat and squat and a half. I wasn’t exercising the best of judgment – -some of my cash was fueling my personal vices – and that also hurt my bank account.
But I had to show my intended a token of my love for her. I fell back on my old standby: Debt. I obtained a Zale’s card and used the account to charge a $700 quarter-carat ring. I would not do that today.
Even if I did have four grand socked away, I sure as hell wouldn’t have spent it all on jewelry. And The Spouse, I believe, was smart enough to have killed me if I did blow my wad on a rock.
Let’s say your young man is thrifty enough to have saved two months’ salary. There are better things on which he can spend those dollars than a mineral of crystalline carbon.
The money can be a down payment on a house. It can start a college fund for your kids. It can start a retirement account. Maybe it can pay for that vacation.
Still not convinced? Still want your man to buy you a rock? Consider this: The diamond may adorn your finger, but its blood will cover the rest of your hand. Diamond mining has caused untold suffering in sub-Saharan Africa.
And closer to home, here in North America, Canadian diamond mining has drawn legions of truck drivers willing to drive their rigs across 300-mile-long, 28-inch-thick sheets of ice to transport diamonds. Despite engineers’ monitoring of the ice road, rigs and their drivers occasionally go down through ice that cracks beneath their weights, with no hope of being saved.
Diamonds have no value except to appeal to our human sense of vanity.
Let your man get established. Then tell him that you’ll accept a less expensive piece of jewelry later, perhaps on your first, fifth or 10th anniversaries. Whatever he presents you will be no less sentimental and he will appreciate you that much more.
Peace.
