Author Topic: Study: Marriage duration inversely correlated with spending on ring and wedding  (Read 7914 times)

mcneally

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Lyssa

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Why am I not surprised...

RunHappy

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Not surprised at all.

MsSindy

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Yep!  And I'm living proof.  Married at the county court house 23 years ago and didn't even have a ring until 5 years later....and a tiny one at that.  I like my small ring, it's a good reminder of our humble beginnings together.

HopefulMustache

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Not surprising to me either, but it is notable in that it claims to be the first truly scientific study on this issue. Not that big weddings can't be successful, they just don't make success.

It's a little hard to parse some of the hard numbers, but I do find it interesting that, generally, those who answered "don't know" for wedding costs had by far the lowest hazard in that department, but those who answered "don't know" for engagement ring costs had by far the highest.


flamingo25

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My mom has a tiny ring and her and my dad have been married for nearly 40 years.

My ring is slightly larger (not hard to do) and I hope to follow suit :).

iris lily

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Yep!  And I'm living proof.  Married at the county court house 23 years ago and didn't even have a ring until 5 years later....and a tiny one at that.  I like my small ring, it's a good reminder of our humble beginnings together.

Nearly same story,courthouse 26 years ago. TODAY actually! Happy anniversary to us! Anyway--

But I did want a big ring. It's a solitaire and less than a carat, but given that we didn't spend money back then even, that was a large-ish stone.

Bob W

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Small ring here -- I spent like $300 on it 7 years ago.  I took it in to have the loose stone tightened up and they said it would cost $350 to repair.   I laughed my ass off.  The jeweler told me that stones have gone up in price.   

Have they gone up that much?

CommonCents

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Super interesting. 

I have some qualms and questions though:
- Is it truly a random sample, using mechanical turk?  Is 3,000 really enough respondents?  They say mTurk itself is diverse, but do the respondents to their study match the overall characteristics?  (In part I question this because the person who is doing mTurk for money may have not spent their money wisely, including on lavish weddings when they couldn't afford them...so just weighting it may not solve that issue)  Also why exclude older people?
- A national, prospective, longitudinal study would be better, as they note
- I've read that people weren't getting divorced during the recession because they couldn't afford to.  It's possible that people who didn't spend a lot want to get divorced, but feel they can't.  I'd like to see some exploration of this.  It may just be a blip though.
- I (skimmed but) didn't see how they controlled for wealth.  Someone else's $50000 may be another's equivalent of $500.  I'd be curious to see how this study looks when seen as a percent of income or wealth.  We have a buddy that bought his now-wife a ~3 carat ruby ring...but he's got major bucks, so that probably costs less to him than my ring effectively cost us.  And we're on our way to FIRE, so that ring cost is different to us than the hair on fire couple.

gimp

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On the other hand, it is proportional to the amount of people who come to your wedding.

In other words, you should spend $50 on your wedding but invite 300 people. Southern-style barbecue potluck sounds like the right plan. Maybe a dress, hopefully some liquor, and have everyone else contribute food and drink in lieu of gifts.

kendallf

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Yes, I liked the fact that success (if we define success as longevity!) was correlated with the number of people at the wedding, with presumable correlation to friends and social network.

I didn't buy my wife a ring at all; we bought $50 gold bands a year or so after we were married.  I was a broke college student, ex military, with orders to the Gulf.  My bride was a pregnant 18 year old.  Yes, I robbed the cradle.

We'll celebrate 24 years in December.   

iris lily

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Small ring here -- I spent like $300 on it 7 years ago.  I took it in to have the loose stone tightened up and they said it would cost $350 to repair.   I laughed my ass off.  The jeweler told me that stones have gone up in price.   

Have they gone up that much?

Diamonds are practically worthless, especially the ones of the size in your ring. Not saying this to be mean, it's reality that stones on the second hand market are not worth much at all and small ones--forgot it. The prices may fluctuate a bit but overall, the diamond market doesn't go up, at least for non-investment size pieces (and that is 99.9% of the rings sold.)

 The cost your jeweler quoted you was for labor and possible replacement metals. Precious metals are where the money is, baby, not small stones.

I had my 25 year old diamond solitaire repaired because the prongs were worn down. I think it cost around that, probably a bit more. My ring is a sentimental thing and a beautiful thing, but ti's not a valuable thing.

galliver

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The Atlantic presents it in a nice graphical format: http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/10/the-divorce-proof-marriage/381401/

And has a nice quote: "Perhaps ill-matched couples use giant diamonds or flashy weddings to cover up the cracks in their emotional foundations. Or maybe couples that have modest rings and receptions feel that their boundless love is a celebration enough."

I believe it. Although it's pretty clear that # of guests and cost are typically somewhat related and there must be an optimum ;)

Bob W

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This got me to thinking about spouse gifts in general.

Here's a funny one I do -- At xmas time, after thanks giving,  I begin hanging numerous stockings over our dining room/kitchen table.   There are usually 10 or 12 stockings.   I stuff the stockings with either free stuff,  $1 items or things like socks or useful stuff. 

On the weekend we have a few cocktails and my wife picks one stocking every 20 minutes or so.  We usually do this for 4 weekends. Some are funny.   It is a great time and costs like $60 a year.   My wife looks forward to it.   Then at xmas day it is a $40 item.    I believe the quantity of gifts outweighs the cost as it does require a bit of effort on my behalf to gather and pack the gifts. 

When she is not opening gifts we unpack and set up our copious thrift store xmas collection. (our daughter says our house looks like "xmas threw up.")   

It is a fun activity that I thought I would share as the xmas season approaches. 

Ynari

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Last Christmas, SO got me a gift that cost under $10.  Most of that was just shipping.

I cried.  For like an hour.  It was an incredible gift. 

I think there's a lot of selection bias in marriage and expensive gifts (like the quote Galliver pointed out). Either that or people who demand expensive things don't do so well in a partnership where your finances are mixed!

sleepyguy

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Hmmm, guess we're doing well... see as we have spent ZERO :)  We aren't married.  Together since 2001 and have 2 kids.

She's into gift giving and such... me not so much.

Spartana

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Here's a funny one I do -- At xmas time, after thanks giving,  I begin hanging numerous stockings over our dining room/kitchen table.   There are usually 10 or 12 stockings.   I stuff the stockings with either free stuff,  $1 items or things like socks or useful stuff. 

 
This is what we did when we were kids. Instead of exchanging gifts we'd have to give a stocking to each other (Mom plus 3 kids) and it had to be either homemade stuff or several $1 items to fill the whole stocking. My sister and I (Mom and brother passed away) have continued on doing this for each other and it has been named "The Giving of The Stocking of Small Shitty Stuff".  Ex-hubby embraced that tradition as well while we were married and we did that for years. It was a lot of fun and we never spent much but got some cool things, lots of food, and yes, some small shitty stuff too.

ETA: ex hubby and I had very inexpensive rings - just small gold bands and I had a 1/4 carat diamond engagement ring (that I almost never wore as I'm not a jewelry person plus I couldn't wear jewelry on the job). We were married 17 years and had a happy amiable divorce (and I gave him back the ring). Not sure what that means in the context of this thread though.
« Last Edit: October 17, 2014, 02:23:20 PM by Spartana »

mm1970

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I think our rings were about $100 each.
18+ years

VirginiaBob

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Phew!  Good thing my wife and I are still wearing those lock washers we bought from the hardware store for 11 cents each.  I was considering going for the brass finish washers,but now I'm glad I didn't.

Self-employed-swami

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DH and I celebrated 6 years married and almost 9 together this month.

The engagement ring was a family heirloom, we had 85 people at the wedding, and spent about $10,000, including the wedding rings, food, DJ, dress and honeymoon..

KBecks2

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We were spendy when we were younger but we're celebrating 15 years on Thursday.  :)    My ring was a recycled ring that was about $5k and we spent maybe $20-$30k on the wedding for 200 people.  I don't remember the total cost.  My dress was $400.  We overspent badly on photos. I am embarrassed to say how much it cost.  It was more than we should have spent!  My dad said to have a picnic in the park wedding and he was right, but we had it at the Hilton in a very elegant historic ballroom.  I did shop around for what I considered to be a good value.  Some places were crazy expensive.  My husband wanted the fancy wedding to impress people, and he does crave fancier things from time to time.   But I'm still working on him.

It was a great wedding, it was elegant and a really fun day. 

sobezen

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Absolutely not surprised. Sometimes I feel over-the-top lavish weddings mask underlying emotional concerns and stroking of entitlement based egos. Yes I will be the first to acknowledge this does not apply to all couples that spend more on rings and weddings, but it does make you wonder if there is a correlation, doesn't it? Also I am constantly amazing by what the media portrays as "normal". If anything I feel media misrepresentations create a vicious debt cycle for people seeking to live a lifestyle they cannot afford.

In the past wise friends counseled me against buying an expensive ring with a rock. Some of these admissions came from female friends who admitted diamonds were pretty but truly a waste of money. Given a choice to redo their wedding, they would have preferred their true love spent less on the ring, and perhaps, allocate a bit more to the honeymoon, home purchase, or education fund.

I am glad to be read about the humble, charming and inspiring stories each of you have shared. Thank you. Cheers! :)
« Last Edit: October 23, 2014, 01:02:16 PM by sobezen »

eyePod

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This is really neat since it agrees with my point of view! :-D

Gave my wife a pearl instead of a diamond (what she wanted) and we did not spend as much as others on the wedding.  No debt and we covered a lot of our costs through the gifts after. We could have done it cheaper but we got a bargain at the location (it's almost double what we paid a few years later).