I’m so sorry that your wedding set was stolen!! That is so awful. I can’t even imagine. Well, you should do what you and your husband both feel comfortable with. Though I will say that, in time, you *might* regret spending that much on jewelry. This is why I say this: my husband and I were both low income military enlisted when we met and married. Our wedding rings all together (my engagement, wedding band, and his wedding band) all cost $550.00 for the set in 1988 and we married in 1989. My diamond is small and I actually insisted on this because I wanted us to have more money to build a nice life together with. There was vague talk of ‘upgrading’ the diamond years down the road when we were better off financially. Well, I never gave my diamond another thought until we were about to celebrate our 25th anniversary. Some of my husbands friends were encouraging him to buy me some sort of spectacular diamond anniversary ring. Instead, he proposed that we upsize my diamond. But then I realized that this little diamond has been through so many ups and downs in our life — it was a valued part of our marriage.
I told him at the time he could buy me OTHER diamonds in other forms of jewelry, but just not replace my engagement ring. Fast forward a year later, when I suddenly decided on my 47th birthday that I wanted to pay off the remaining $96K mortgage within 3 years. We make a modest combined 5-figure income, so this was a bit of a stretch, but I wanted to own the house outright by the time I turned 50. Well, we made that goal a month early . . .then took another year to pay off a car loan. Now we’ve been 100% debt-free for 7 months now, and it feels fantastic! We’d been a bit behind in our retirement savings, so we have been SHOVELING at least 50% of our income into retirement savings, living on less than half our income. It is very liberating. Now I feel that I don’t ever want to spend money on jewelry ever again! I now know about how money grows and compounds so incredibly over the years. That $2,000 would compound to $13,696 with average interest rate of 8% in 25 years (stock market historically returns 10%).
I value the security of the money more than a piece of shiny jewelry now. I would still get a ring, if I were in your shoes, but I would be chomping at the bit to get a ‘fake’ for two reasons — the considerable cost savings, and the fact if someone stole it again, I would not be “out” $2,000. Also, a ring that valuable should be insured. That’s gonna cost you more, too. Anyhow, I see it a lot with people here . .. we get a taste of what it’s like to be FI and all of a sudden, things that we so important to us in the past no longer hold the appeal. Once you buy the ring, you won’t be able to get that price back. Like cars, jewelry depreciates as soon as you walk out the door with it.
