Yes of course it's silly! But that's not the point, and it never has been. Once you're at the point of buying a gift that costs far more than its intrinsic, utilitarian value, worrying about its "true scarcity" is just haggling on the details. I purchased an engagement ring for my wife that costed about $30,000. She didn't ask for anything remotely as extravagant as that, but she likes it and I enjoy it for frankly vain reasons. I take immense pleasure out of the reactions it elicits from other people. Despite being very clear-eyed about the artificial scarcity of diamonds and DeBeers marketing, I still bought it because I enjoyed being able to make a frivolous purchase. Personally I don't like spending a lot on things that aren't either experiential or somewhat long-lasting, so I'd never spend much at all on a wedding dress. But I don't begrudge people for spending money inefficiently if they can afford it.
We're all the same species. With very few exceptions, none of us is hyper-vigilant, hyper-rational or hyper-efficient. There are many, many things we idly buy which are artificially scarce or inflated in price. Buying them is not categorically different from buying expensive jewelry under a cultural zeitgeist perpetuated by a global conglomerate. I think most people really don't have much self-awareness about how high their floor of wealth and personal spending is over the ceiling of frugality and efficiency they talk about so much.
Yes, but that doesn't mean we have to actively make the situation worse.
If not, 30K might represent 6-12 months of personal runway to build your own business.
50% is considered very good, but in consumer focused America some people might save only 10% of their income (thus for a 100K income to save 30K represents 3 years of savings obliterated).
Sure if you have the money. The problem is that most people don’t and spend what would be a down payment on a house on complete bullshit. It’s a terrible way to start a marriage and likely leads to higher rates of divorce.
Too much of this is similar to "The child of a proper family marries at a certain age and gets a proper wedding".
Fight the power! Be the change!
> Too much of this is similar to "The child of a proper family marries at a certain age and gets a proper wedding".
Getting married "at a certain age" (i.e. young) isn't necessarily a bad thing. On the contrary, I'd argue that being a parent (or grandparent!) while you're still young, active, and in good health is a wonderful thing. It's blindly succumbing to social pressure to make financially disastrous decisions that must be avoided. Go ahead an have a wedding party too, but do it on your terms.
Be it most blatantly the shaming of older unmarried women in Chinese society or more practically arranged marriages of young girls in rural middle eastern areas. Honor killings are just the crassest and most publicized method to uphold the second tradition, but if you read reports of women who went through this, the first part is always brutal social pressure by the direct family including "asking" and begging by their own mothers. Never underestimate the viciousness of parents who think they are pushing their children to do the "right" thing and are not above making this their first priority.
If I caught someone in my family pulling crap like continually pressuring spouses to spend above their means and force them into debt with that line of argument they will likely have to reevaluate whether they might be better off without me in their life. A lot of people sadly only realize this after they see family members trying to do the same thing to the next generation. Differently put, depending on how much grandma doesnt understand the word "no stop it" she wont be coming over for the holidays anymore.
(I agree with you).. but back to the original commenter's point about the behavior, versus the object of the behavior:
Do you believe that eliminating (or sufficienctly discouraging through education or contrary social pressure) diamonds and/or expensive weddings would sufficiently eliminate this spending above ones means? Or would that spending just shift to other targets, such as different jewelry (which even the article refers to in talking about spending more money on setting instead) or experiences?
Having your fiance wanting a diamond ring is a different problem then your mother in law pushing you to spend 30k on your wedding to show off to the neighbors.
Advertisement based spending is just another set of problems when it develops without outside social pressure. Its the difference between your wife needing to show off to her mother and girlfriends, wanting to show off. or you two agreeing about how it might be spend best.
Just to point out though, while the example of diamond rings is focused on the female spouse, this isnt a issue that only happens with her. Pick another example and you could switch the roles.
The last option, of discussing how to spend the money, is simply about the state of your relationship. If you two agree that spending 30k is worth the fun of taking a few month off for vacation, all the best to you. Just do it because you want to, not because you think you have to.
If I had plenty of money and nothing more important to spend it on, I'd (personally) go for a crazy fun extravagant wedding. If not, then I wouldn't. If you have no savings, obviously don't spend a ton on a wedding...
Do you really want to enrich debeers? Buy a 2K wedding cake?
Alternatively I would get a custom piece designed.
There's a difference between shopping until you drop, and giving the woman you love the occasional gift to show that you love and appreciate her.
Yes, it's not required, you don't _NEED_ expensive jewellery or fancy weddings, but if you have excess money that you are not investing, why not?
On the flipside, I also like getting nice gifts. Don't you?
Just tell someone you love them and do nice things for them and be there for them. It's free.
I'm into mechanical watches. Just because I find them interesting, not for show. I'm not brainwashed, but heck, getting one I really want from someone I love would be close to the ultimate gift. Do I need it? Of course not. Do I expect it? Of course not.
Now you're just being casually sexist. If you want to judge people for how they choose to celebrate their mutual affection that's fine. So diamonds aren't your thing, thanks for sharing. But let's not go down the rabbit hole of litigating one gender's susceptibility over another's.
You should look into getting a therapist to talk through whatever has soured your outlook on life to this point of bitter cynicism.
Citation needed. Seriously, mechanical watches can be a great investment if you know what you are buying.
Yes: diamonds, jewellery, mechanical watches etc are all bad value for money. People don't buy them because they're bad value. They buy them because they like wearing them, and women buy jewellery because it makes them feel pretty.
That's life. It's fine throwing money away sometime.