How To Get Your Dream Engagement Ring Without Breaking the Bank
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Feels like progress.

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And a quick moment of humility here. I have been trying to work with Public for years now and low-key stock them because I am such an avid Public user and every other app or site I've tried to buy bonds on has actually made me want to rip my hair out. Public is so easy to use and has thousands of bonds to choose from and not just US treasuries, but corporate bonds too, like for the magnificent seven stocks like Apple, Beta, and Nvidia.

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I'm Nicole Lappin, the only financial expert you don't need a dictionary to understand. It's time for some money rehab. Money rehab.

We are told that we should spend three to six months of our salary on an engagement ring for our forever boo. And as a financial expert, I can tell you that is freaking insane. That is so much money. Six months of your salary is the amount of money I recommend people put in their emergency fund when life gets hard and you can't pay for hard life with a ring. So a shameless plug for your financial future. I would much rather you have that emergency fund in check before you pop the question.

But also, you don't have to spend that much on an engagement ring. You just don't. There are a ton of hacks for getting a stunning happily ever after diamond ring without breaking the bank. And by the way, one of the easiest ways to save money on that diamond is to pick a gemstone instead. You could go Megan Fox, Machine Gun Kelly style and get you and your partner's birthstones on a band instead. Super cute, super meaningful, super less expensive than getting a diamond.

But for purposes of this episode, I'm just going to assume that your lifey wants to keep it classy and do a diamond ring. I told you a little while ago that I would tell you about my executive producer Morgan's experience going engagement ring shopping with her now fiance. Yay. Congrats, guys. Jack. And what they learned from going deep.

down the rabbit hole of budgeting for an engagement ring. You'll hear from Morgan and Jack at the end of the episode, and they'll tell you how they were able to get a serious deal on a gorgeous engagement ring. Here's a sneak peek. They were able to get a 7K ring for half of that. Crazy kids. You go, guys. But before they tell you that story, here are my three tips for how to save on an engagement ring. Number one.

Shape up. There are so many options when it comes to the shape of the diamond. You could do square, oval, halo, heart, round, cushion, emerald, whatever princess cut is. You can do all of that. The thing to know is that the most expensive shape by far is, quote, the round shape, which is just a fancy word for a circle.

The reason round diamonds are the most expensive is because the demand for this particular shape is so high and because the process of cutting the round diamond is relatively more difficult than the other shapes. So if your boo isn't set on a particular shape, consider a pear cut or a marquee's cut, which is a fancy term for a football shape. Both of these shapes maximize carat weight, making the diamond appear larger and more affordable than a round shape.

2. Game the 4 Cs If you've started shopping around, you've heard about the 4 Cs a million times because every salesperson is gonna want to tell you about them. The 4 Cs are four qualities of a diamond that can affect the price of the stone. They are cut, color, clarity, and carat. This is something particular about the diamond industry that drives me bonkers. Within the 4 Cs, all of the metrics are completely different. It makes my OCD go wild.

It's not like cut, color, clarity, and carrots all have an A+ as their best rating. They bounce around from metrics like D and excellent to VS1. My type A brain is not so happy about this system because it is so confusing, but I will walk you through the terms, which characteristics are actually important, and which ones are

are straight up scams. First, the definitions. Let's start with the big one that everybody thinks about: carrots. This one is pretty simple. How big is the rock? According to The Knot, the most common engagement ring size is 1.5 carats. But of course, there is a lot of range there and many people scale up or down on either side of that common 1.5. This is not a one size fits all purchase.

Color is also an obvious one. It's whether the diamond is clear and colorless, which is the more expensive side of the spectrum, and whether the diamond has some gray, blue, or yellow in it, which typically costs less. Jewelers grade color on an alphabetical spectrum, with most colorless diamonds being labeled D color, and that drops all the way to Z color, which means that the diamond has very noticeable color to it.

Now getting to the less intuitive Cs. Cut you can think of as describing how sparkly the ring is. Cut has five grades: excellent, very good, good, fair, and poor. And for the last C, clarity.

classification tells you if there are any blemishes or what are called inclusions in the diamond. The clarity scale goes from flawless, which means there are no inclusions, even under a 10x magnification using one of those jeweler's Lupe monocle looking thingies, to included, which means that there are inclusions visible to the naked eye.

The grades in between flawless and included are a whole lot of alphabet soup. There's VS1 and VS2, which means very slightly included.

and VVS1 and VVS2, which you guessed it, means very, very slightly included. Okay, the definition segment of this episode is over. Here's why this matters. If you see a diamond salesperson, they are going to sell you on a diamond at the very high end of that spectrum of the four Cs. But here is the most important thing to remember. For clarity and cut, you literally cannot see the difference between

the high end and the mid end of the spectrum. But the difference in price is massive. So I'm just going to tell you what to look for and then explain why. First of all, the shape and carrot of the diamond is probably going to be very personal, so you probably won't have a ton of flexibility there if your bae for life has some strong opinions. But here's a cheat code. Look for G or H color, VS1 or VS2 clarity and very good cut. Why look for this hodgepodge of characteristics?

Because these are points on the quality scale where two boxes are checked. They're not the highest tiers on the quality scale, so they're relatively less expensive than similar diamonds with the highest ratings. And number two, you cannot tell the difference between diamonds at these ratings and the highest ratings unless you are looking under a microscope. Literally, how often do you think you're going to be looking at your rock under a microscope? Never.

I thought so. So don't believe the hype or the markups. And for the final event, the biggest hack of all, number three.

Get a lab-grown diamond. Historically, diamonds for engagement rings have been sourced from mining. It's no secret that there are some ethical implications. Remember the movie Blood Diamond? Luckily, there's an alternative, lab-grown diamonds. These are diamonds that are chemically same-same as mine diamonds, but instead of growing naturally in the wild, they are grown in a lab-

Captain Obvious, I know. Lab-grown diamonds can cost anywhere between 50 and 70% of the cost of mined diamonds, though. Plus, the sourcing is way less exploitative than naturally occurring diamonds. The only thing to know here is that while mined diamonds appreciate, in most cases, it is, though, very hard to sell an engagement ring, lab-grown diamonds will likely depreciate. And for the final tip, here is Morgan and Jack.

Hey Morgan. Hey Jack. How you doing? Good how are you? I'm good. Good to see you on the couch. Good to see you here fiance. Fiance. How's being a fiance so far? Oh man it's my favorite. Your favorite what? It's my favorite fiance. I love it. It's great. Just waiting on my ring. Yeah in process.

So we, and when I say we, I mean you, really went down the diamond rabbit hole. How many jeweler's loops do you own now? Three. That's so nuts. All different magnifications. Which one is your favorite? The 10X is nice because you kind of, you see it, you see the diamond close enough to

that you can see all the sparkles and the, you can really look at it, but it's also not too close. So you can sort of zoom out and see the diamond as a whole. So nuts. Yeah. So, um,

After the process of learning literally everything that there is to know about buying an engagement ring, what would you say is your number one tip and the biggest action that you took that made the biggest difference in the price of the ring? I educated myself on the industry. And what I learned is that the industry is...

Not a scam, but kind of. The diamonds are honestly, they're pretty worthless. And, you know, if you read about De Beers, you'll understand that they artificially keep the number of diamonds in the market low to keep the price high. But more importantly, what I learned is that every diamond has a unique serial number that is engraved on it when it's graded by the grading agencies.

And thanks to the internet, you can search those diamonds by serial number. And the way that the industry works now is that you'll have 10 websites, different websites, all pulling from the same virtual inventory. What does that mean? It means that website A will sell the same exact diamond as website B because they all have access to the same inventory.

The interesting thing is that these websites all list the diamonds for different prices. So if there was a diamond that I liked online, I could find the serial number, look at it on one website, see the price, then go to another website, search the same exact diamond, not a similar diamond, the same exact diamond because it has that unique serial number and check the price there.

And nine times out of 10, there was a substantial difference. And once I knew the diamond I wanted, I could just shop around on all the diamond sites, see which one had the best price, and then buy it from there.

That's so crazy. Yeah. Okay, so then you buy the diamond itself and then you found a place where you wanted to get it set. And they took the diamond and the setting and they put it all together to make the ring. Yes. Okay, so it would be like you really wanted a purple dress. Mm-hmm. And you found out that this one purple fabric...

was being sold by H&M and Dolce & Gabbana. Yep. And it's the same exact one dress. There's only one of this dress, but you can buy it from Dolce & Gabbana for a billion dollars or you can buy it from H&M for not a billion dollars. Exactly. Exactly.

Well, I bought it from H&M. I mean, why wouldn't you? Hey, I mean, if there's a deal to be had, I'm there. So what was the website that you found to be cheapest? Oh, man. Do you need to pull up your spreadsheet? Well, the website that I liked the most and that I found most user friendly was Rare Carrot.

They made it really easy to search specific diamonds and see what you wanted and sort of tweak the filters and say, I want this size or that size or this color, whatever. But they weren't always the cheapest. And not every site has every diamond. So I would maybe find a diamond on Rare Carrot and then search it on... What was the other one? Brilliance?

Yeah, Brilliance was one. And then there was one that was like Ritani. Ritani. You are pulling up the spreadsheet. Let's see. Yeah, so I have here on my site, I have Rare Carrot. I have Ritani. There was another one called, I think, Brilliance. Friendly Diamond. The internet creates competition and these sites all have to be better than the next. Yeah.

I found it quite fun. Well, thank you for my ring. It's perfect and I love it. And I love you. Ew. Ew!

For today's tip you can take straight to the bank: shop online for an engagement ring. Stay with me, I know it sounds weird and you probably feel like you should see this ring in person and you should! Because online diamond stores like Rare, Carrot, and Ritney don't have though the overhead of office space, office equipment, the water cooler, utilities for the office space, those retailers can pass on those savings to you in the form of a more affordable diamond.

Between summer vacations and going to the beach and having the hot girl or guy summer of your dreams,

season can be a little hard on our wallets. A Chime checking account helps you reach your financial goals while still enjoying the summer. You can take back your finances with features like fee-free overdraft up to $200 with SpotMe or getting paid up to two days early with direct deposit. Learn more at Chime.com slash MNN. And you know I hate overdrafted fees. One time I overdrafted buying a latte, which was so embarrassing at the time, but hey, it happened.

That's Chime.com slash MNN. Chime.

Feels like progress.

While you're binging the pod, how about a little bonus tip? As a starting place for your investment allocation that you can, of course, tailor depending on your goals, pros recommend making your bond allocation your age. How about a second bonus tip? When you want to invest in bonds, use Public, the modern brokerage for investors looking for a simple yet sophisticated investing experience.

Public is truly the only place I buy bonds, legit, because every other app or site I've tried to use is so complicated, but on Public, I can buy a bond on my iPhone in less than five minutes. This is a major upgrade because most investing platforms that offer bonds design their user experience before the iPhone was even invented. I'll let that one sink in. And you can use Public for more than your bond investments.

Public is the brokerage I use for all my investing needs, whether I'm looking for stocks, ETFs, a high-yield cash account, options, and other assets, even music royalties. To build the multi-asset portfolio of your dreams, go to public.com slash money rehab. One more time, because trust, you will thank me, public.com slash money rehab. This is a paid endorsement for public investing. Full disclosures and conditions can be found in the podcast description.

Money Rehab is a production of Money News Network. I'm your host, Nicole Lappin. Money Rehab's executive producer is Morgan Lavoie. Our researcher is Emily Holmes.

Do you need some money rehab? And let's be honest, we all do. So email us your money questions, moneyrehab at moneynewsnetwork.com to potentially have your questions answered on the show or even have a one-on-one intervention with me. And follow us on Instagram at Money News and TikTok at Money News Network for exclusive video content. And lastly, thank you. No, seriously, thank you. Thank you for listening and for investing in yourself, which is the most important investment you can make.

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It's one of my all time favorite side hustles. By hosting your space, you are monetizing what you already own. It doesn't get easier than that. For me, hosting on Airbnb has always been a no brainer. When I first signed up, I remember thinking to myself, self, you pay a lot of money for your house.

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