As most of you know, I’m engaged to The Sheconomist.  As we prepare for our ceremony this fall there are many details that have to be addressed.  Perhaps one of the most important is wedding rings.  Of all the events of the wedding day, the wedding ring is the only material possession that we’ll always have with us.  Not that any other detail is less important, but few would argue the wedding ring is unimportant.

Now I don’t talk much about my personal finances on Weakonomics, mostly because you don’t care, but also because that material is boring to me.  But when it’s something major like a car, a computer, an engagement ring, or a cell phone, I like to share it with you.

Over the last few months The Sheconomist and I have been shopping for a wedding ring for me; she’s already get hers because it came with her engagement ring.  Her ring is palladium, a metal closely related to platinum in appearance and on the periodic table of elements, yet it’s less than 1/3 the price in jewelry form.  Gold also demands a premium over palladium, but it’s less significant.  I don’t like gold because it’s too shiny.  There are other options out there, but there are properties of palladium that draw me to it; most notably its appearance, price, and relative lightness.  So all of this combined with me wanting to match metals with the future wife made palladium the only option I would consider for a wedding ring.

We went back to the same store and person that sold me The Sheconomist’s ring because we had a really good experience last time (free truffles in the store!).  We initially received a quote* for a plain wedding band in palladium of $350.  We lallygagged and got distracted for a few weeks and by the time we went back to the store recently the market price for palladium had unfortunately increased.  On top of that I didn’t want simply a plain ring, I wanted a little design built in – knowing full well it will probably wear away with time.  After picking a simple design and size we liked The Sheconomist received a new quote based on the market prices.  A plain ring would have been about $400 now because of the increase in the cost of the metal, with the design tossed in the ring would now be $500.

$500 was more than we wanted to spend, and I always like to haggle a bit.  On my iPhone I sent the following email.  It literally took me 15 seconds to write this (names are changed):

The Sheconomist has told me the ring will be around $500. The
price is good but we were really hoping it would be lower. I
understand prices fluctuate, but can you do anything to bring the
price down to $400?

-Philip Weakonomist

As you can see I’m asking for a 20% discount.  When you haggle always go a little lower than what you might think is appropriate.  Notice I pointed out that we were okay with the price and understood why it cost what it did, but we were really hoping it would be cheaper.  I gave a target price of $400.

She responded within the hour basically saying she couldn’t do $400 but she could do $425.  That’s a 15% savings off the initial quote when all I did was pound out an email on my phone in 15 seconds!I could have perhaps gone lower but The Sheconomist and I are interested in getting the ring so we can move on to more urgent and expensive wedding details.

What if the jeweler couldn’t have gone lower? In all likelihood we would have just paid the quoted price just to move on, but I could have responded saying The Sheconomist and I would need to talk it over for a few days. I would let the jeweler marinate on the thought of losing a sale and in a few days follow-up by asking if they’re sure they can’t get down to $400 stressing the importance of my tight budget.  If receiving another negative response I would try one last time at around $440 and hope for $450 as a deal maker.  I could always find the same or similar ring at another store and get a lower quote to have two compete, but as I’ve already mentioned, we were tired of shopping and really like this store (did I mention the free truffles?).

One final note about jewelry, don’t pay the price you see on the tag.  The retail price of this ring in the store is over $800, had we bought the ring I tried on that day I would have paid that.  So if you compare the “sticker price” to what I paid, I actually saved about 45%.  You can do the same thing by merely asking the store to get a quote from the manufacturer, you’ll probably see the price “drop” at least 10% from the sticker.

So now my ring is on order and I’m anxious to receive it in the coming weeks.  I can’t wear it yet of course, but I imagine The Sheconomist and I might put the rings on eachother just once; you know, for practice.

*For simplicity the quoted prices have been slightly altered; the difference between each quote is a similar percentage to what I received.

Photo: abardwell

By The Weakonomist

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categories: personal, personal finance