Money being the ONLY reason?

[Rose_Dust]

I offered to help, as many of you have and he declined. He said it was a pride issue, he wants to get me the ring I want on his own and make me happy. So I will wait longer. Although asking another time, he did seem more open to me loaning him the money to do it sooner and then pay me back later. Who knows what will really happen. At this point I''m just hoping his car will stop breaking down so money can go toward my ring and not the car.

 

[Pushin40]

Yep I offered but he didn''t take me up on it.

Technically it all comes from the same pot since we live together.

 

[Anonymous]

I offered, and he refused because he wanted to buy the ring himself. Money WAS the only thing holding up our engagement. He had a big tax bill that he''d been saving to pay, and saving for the ring. I ended up getting a LOT more back from my taxes, so I gave him part of it to pay his tax bill...freeing up some money to go towards the ring. So in some ways, yes I did help, but technically I didn''t.

We live together, have shared finances, and a very healthy spending plan in terms of fully knowing our limitations and expectations for our lives together financially. Like OP''s have said, a lot of people that are heading towards engagement consider it their combined money already. It was more than enough for me that he worked with me to set up a spending plan and made sacrifices (as did I, happily) to be able to afford to buy my ring. He also did tons of research on what to look for (seriously, the man could be a jeweler at this point...) and where to get the best prices (online for the stone - BN since we had a coupon and a gift certificate there already). So we ended up being able to get a much better ring for a LOT less than if he''d just gone into a store and let a salesman rob him.

 

[IdLikeToBuyAVal]

We purchased my engagement ring jointly. We lived together and had already purchased our house together and shared finances anyway so we talked about it, set a budget and started shopping. He picked the diamond and I picked the setting so it worked out well for us.

 

[crossmyfingers]

I told SO that I think a lot of the gender roles involved in getting married seem unfair. One of the things I mentioned was that it seems much more fair to me if we were to combine the prices of my e-ring and both our w-bands and each of us pay half that. He said no way - that he understood what I meant, but that he wants to buy at least my engagement ring himself.

He has enough money to comfortably buy a ring we will both be happy with. He''s great at saving money, which is a huge relief. If we didn''t have the money, I would marry him without a ring. I''ve told him while I will be thrilled with a ring, if that didn''t make sense to us financially I wouldn''t lose sleep over not having one. He really wants me to have an engagement ring, and I know if we didn''t have the money for one, he would go ahead and marry me, then he would buy me one once we could afford it.

Like babycush said, maybe money *isn''t* the only issue? Or, rather, maybe money is the issue, but not just because of the ring. Maybe he wants to be more financially stable before you two get married.

 

[shimmer]

We were together nearly 10 years before we got engaged, most of the time we were students. So money was the only issue of not getting engaged and married (by that point)-we were living together about 6 years and owned a condo. The first year we both had steady full time jobs we started a special savings account for the ring. I have no idea how much either of us contributed, we just stuffed money in it whenever we had extra. As soon as we were happy with what we could get with what we had saved we bought the ring! Such fond memories. It was really meaningful because it was one of the first things we saved up together for

 

[LtlFirecracker]

I offered to help and I told him I would be happier with a less expensive ring. He would have nothing to do with either conversation, he said this was something he needed to do.

He ended up getting me a diamond that exceeded my expatiation''s about 3 months after he was in a good financial position.