The Ring

A recent conversation I had with a male friend was quite interesting. Well, I thought it was quite interesting.

He is currently living with his girlfriend of 4 years. They bought a house together and have been living there for about 1 year now. Since they bought the house, they have joint accounts. Both their income goes into the offset account and they just use money from the one account. It seems like these days that's the best way to save money and reduce the amount of interest you pay on your home loan. They both don't have any "secret" money of their own.

He is planning to propose to her in December this year. He is saving money to buy her ring. Now, here's the key part, he plans to use "their" savings from "their" offset account to buy the ring. Does that sound unfair or is that the norm nowadays? When he mentioned he was saving up for the ring, and a bell started ringing in my head.. huh? that sounds weird. I don't think I would like my boyfriend to propose to me with a ring bought with "our" money. Call me old fashion, but it just doesn't sound right.

So if that's the case, here's the next question, is it really simply better get engaged before you commit to buying a house with your partner? Obviously all the savings would go towards the deposit of the home. Would you point out to him to leave some savings for the ring?? But what if that 20% deposit you needed was everything you had? What would you do? What do people do? Or by that time, the ring doesn't matter that much anymore?

I'm truely old fashion. My boyfriend needs to buy me to ring, needs a romantic/sweet or at least "a thought put into" the proposal process and of course, last but not least, a bunch of roses. I think that is the way it should be. :)