{"id":1283,"date":"2016-08-01T12:29:05","date_gmt":"2016-08-01T12:29:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/beyondchai.com\/blog\/?p=1283"},"modified":"2016-08-01T14:32:12","modified_gmt":"2016-08-01T14:32:12","slug":"in-love-budget-two-months-salary-to-seal-the-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/beyondchai.com\/blog\/2016\/08\/01\/in-love-budget-two-months-salary-to-seal-the-deal\/","title":{"rendered":"In Love? Budget Two Months&#8217; Salary to Seal the Deal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>With the summer wedding season in full swing, the most important prop \u2014 a diamond ring \u2014 is top-of-mind for couples planning to tie the knot.<\/p>\n<p>But before popping the question, one important consideration is the cost.<\/p>\n<p>A one-carat diamond cost the equivalent of eight weeks&#8217; salary, or about $7,300, for the average American worker as of last month. If that seems exorbitant, times have been worse: The number of hours of work it takes to afford the luxury good has trended downward in recent years and has fallen by almost half since 2011. <\/p>\n<p>Bloomberg constructed the statistic by comparing the price of a one-carat diamond against the average hourly wage for an American over about a 34-hour workweek \u2014 the mean office time for U.S. employees.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf you\u2019re looking at a traditional ring, the stone is going to be the most expensive part,\u201d said Kristen Maxwell Cooper, executive editor of the wedding website TheKnot.com.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"float: left;\"><span style=\"float:left; padding-right: 15px; padding-bottom: 7px; padding-top: 8px;\"><script async src=\"\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js\"><\/script>\r\n<!-- BC300-250 -->\r\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\"\r\n     style=\"display:inline-block;width:300px;height:250px\"\r\n     data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-9441334350567224\"\r\n     data-ad-slot=\"3883394805\"><\/ins>\r\n<script>\r\n(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\r\n<\/script><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Engagements rings are the pulse of the diamond industry, and marriage trends are a long-term factor driving prices of the gem, according to an industry report from consulting firm Bain &#038; Co. in Boston. The challenges facing the sector include changing views in Europe, Japan and the U.S. \u2014 where diamonds are being seen as less of a status symbol. It&#8217;s hard to know what the next wave of consumers will make of them, according to the Bain &#038; Co. report.<\/p>\n<p>The future of the industry will depend on couples-to-be, who seem to be eschewing the wedding traditions of their parents for something more unique.<\/p>\n<p>Now, lovebirds, take a deeper breath: The ring is probably only a fraction of the cost of your big day. The average investment for a wedding in the U.S. is at a record high of $32,641, according to a 2015 survey of 18,000 couples by TheKnot.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With the summer wedding season in full swing, the most important prop \u2014 a diamond ring \u2014 is top-of-mind for couples planning to tie the knot. But before popping the question, one important consideration is the cost. A one-carat diamond cost the equivalent of eight weeks&#8217; salary, or about $7,300, for the average American worker [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1284,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[316],"tags":[481,472,352,578,579,463,483,449,454,577,477,576,444,466,467],"class_list":["post-1283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wedding-tips","tag-compassion","tag-couple","tag-culture","tag-financial","tag-financial-issues","tag-interfaith-marriage","tag-love","tag-marriage-issues","tag-marriage-partner","tag-money","tag-money-handling-tips","tag-money-matters","tag-relationship","tag-wedding-planning","tag-wedding-tips"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/beyondchai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/beyondchai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/beyondchai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beyondchai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beyondchai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1283"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/beyondchai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1283\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1286,"href":"https:\/\/beyondchai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1283\/revisions\/1286"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beyondchai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/beyondchai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beyondchai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beyondchai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}