Cheap engagement rings were the conversation around the table at our Girls Game Night on Thursday. Every Thursday us girls get together and play games. Sometime we play a board game and other nights we play poker or Texas Hold’em. The men are not allowed to play and are usually banished from the house. Anyway, there are several single girls amongst us and somehow we always get on the subject of boyfriends or engagement or weddings or babies. Other times weight loss, exercise, cooking or menstrual cycles. Anyway, it looked like it was going to be one of those discussions about rings. Of course, you know how these kinds of things go. Everyone has an opinion or think that the way they did it was perfect or that the way they did it should never be repeated. It’s like those stories you hear when mothers are telling mothers to be about their labor pains. Everyone thinks they had it the worst, and no one has experienced it before even though it is a process that has been going on since the beginning of time. Well, it is the same with engagement rings. There have been options from the most expensive engagement ring to the cheap engagement rings since people have been giving engagement rings.

Well, of course I couldn’t just sit there and not give my opinion while everyone else felt they had some light to share on the subject of cheap engagement rings. My friend Stacey had been talking about moving their relationship ahead. They have been dating for awhile, but hadn’t felt ready to move to the next step yet. Both were going through school and then concentrating on getting a good job. Stacey was lucky enough to get an entry level job when she got out of college which was great. She had hoped to start out with a little higher starting salary, but in this bad economy, she felt fortunate to have a job. Her boyfriend Cal graduated with a fine arts degree and still hasn’t found a decent job. He is working at a book store for minimum wage and is considering getting a teaching degree because even a teacher’s annual salary would be better than what he is bring home now.

So, the question posed by Stacey was, should we just buy a cheap engagement ring or invest in an expensive ring since it is something I will have forever and I will want it to be nice? I gave her my opinion. I said, first of all you should never buy something that you cannot afford right now. I asked her, what can you go down to the jewelry store and pay cash for right now? Well, of course the answer was a cheap engagement ring. I told her that it was not a good idea for her and Cal to buy something that they could not afford for several reasons. First of all, that puts a huge financial strain on the couple right away and they should not have to deal with that. The economy is bad enough as it is and they both are already struggling financially. It would be better to have a cheap engagement ring and be able to afford fun trips, vacations and frivolities during this very special period of their relationship. After all, I said, you can always buy a more expensive ring to celebrate an anniversary later on down the road. You know, I told her, my grandparents exchanged very simple wedding bands over fifty years ago, and my grandmother still wears her ring to this day. Do you think that she looks at that ring as something cheap? Of course not! It was cheap of course because that is all that they could afford, but that is not what matters. What matters are the memories that that wedding band evokes in her mind. She told me when I was a little girl about how grandpa surprised her with that ring when she was sixteen and her daddy wasn’t happy about it, but he said she was old enough to start making her own mistakes. I can remember her telling me it was her first very big mistake and the best one she has ever made.

Some of my other girlfriends had different opinions. One said that it is better to invest in a more expensive ring because it would be better quality and besides it’s better to spend the money now because it is even less likely that you will have it later. She also said that you can get what you really want if you spend more money. Stacey said that she wanted a diamond set and she didn’t think that they sold any cheap diamond engagement rings. Of course they do I told her. You can find cheap diamond engagement rings everywhere you look online and in the stores. I told Stacey that she and Cal should just start looking and see what is out there. The best way is to decide ahead of time how much money you are willing and able to spend and then only look at rings in that price range. The odds are you can find a cheap engagement ring that you will cherish forever.