Hippie guide to value-setting

I may or may not be wearing a diamond ring on my (middle) finger. I mean, I'm wearing a ring on my middle finger--that's just the finger it fits best; read into that what you will--and the stone in it may or may not be a real diamond. It's pretty convincing, but there are as many reasons to think it's not a diamond as there are to think it is. My mother gave it to me over the summer, and she'd kept it in the safe deposit box (where she also keeps a bunch of costume jewelry). She'd always kept it alongside my grandmother's (and great-grandmother's) earrings, which are studded with real (albeit smaller) diamonds. Those are the earrings that were returned to my grandmother when her mother passed away in hospice, even as the half-loaf of bread that my grandmother had brought her mother the day before was not returned, because such were the times. I've heard [Nina's dad] yell at my mom, more than once, for taking the great risk of smuggling the jewelry out of the Soviet Union. I'm just not sure--and neither are my parents, at this point--whether the ring, or even the stone, was part of the storied jewelry. Nobody seems to remember where the ring came from (insert your own Hobbit joke); it must have been in the family, because it's not like my mother made a habit of buying anything other than costume jewelry with new-agy stones, but it doesn't look heirloomy (the earrings definitely do).


So when mom first gave me the ring--she'd tried to give it to me years ago, with the earrings, but I fought back at the time, saying I had no use for rings--I did some interwebs research to see if there were quick tricks for sussing out the realness of diamonds. There are a few household methods, but the latest fake-diamond technology has surpassed most of them (not that the ring in question is new enough, in any case, to benefit from the latest technology). None of those methods yielded a definitive result, but one of the interweb sites listing the methods yielded a key point: who the f* cares? If you like the ring--if it looks good--does it really matter what it's made of?

I bring this up not only because of the article I posted a week ago about the hyped up value of diamonds, but also because of the status-seeking aspects of the McDonnell scandal. Why are we letting people talk us into buying or at the very least overpaying for things that add little to the quality of our lives? I've probably overpaid for jewelry--and I love jewelry--but if this ring has taught me anything, it's that I would never want to pay (or want anyone else to pay) thousands of dollars for a ring. I'd never given the matter much thought in the past (you have probably figured out by now that I've not spent my life waiting around for dudes bearing rings, much less making them sandwiches). But having this ring has made it starkly clear to me that, for the money, I'd rather have new floors or a few trips somewhere or a few donations to things that matter. I'm not going to tell anyone else how to spend their money; that's Suze Orman's job. I'm just telling you that diamonds are not how I'd spend mine (never mind the other, myriad issues with most diamonds), and that you should only spend your money on things that really matter to you. Not on things that other people, industries, and advertisers tell you that you should value.

I've been thinking about this a lot, most recently out of being around mom over the holidays, as she repeatedly told me about how valuable something or other was--she had gotten it at a great price, but really, it was originally very expensive. She would assign this (usually) inflated value to various things, some of them possibly quite valuable, others clearly not so much. But in either case, I could only think, "if you have no use for it, who cares?" She'd had me try on an old pair of jeans of mine--they were in excellent condition, even though I'd gotten them when I was in high school, but they fit me like clown pants--and insisted that I take them because she was sure they were invaluable. Mom's not well, obviously; she doesn't think clearly anymore. But her dementia hasn't given her many new quirks; it's mostly exacerbated her existing behaviors and tendencies. The
delusional overvaluing in which she's engaged of late is a mere extension of the less delusional overvaluing she engaged in as soon as she could (i.e., as soon as she was out of the Soviet Union and started making enough money to get out of subsistence mode). She would buy things, to my dad's frustration, not because she necessarily needed them or liked them, but because she thought they were valuable.

She doesn't have a monopoly on that kind of thinking; that's how a lot of discounts 'work,' and it's the business model for many a department store. Remember what happened to JC Penney when they tried to get out of it? People love thinking that they're getting a great deal (unless they love thinking that they're paying a fair price, or a price that signals how much they're capable of paying). The retail price frames the discounted price. What I'm suggesting we all consider, i.e., base our purchasing decisions on, is the price you're willing to pay, given what this thing (or experience) is or isn't getting you.

Over the summer, a then-friend of mine gave me--regifted, in a sense--a bunch of food that he thought to be very valuable, because it had come from the kitchen of a wealthy man (who had moved; the then-friend was helping a friend of his clean out the apartment). Most of the food turned out to be decidedly unposh; then friend was disappointed, because he'd wanted to give me something valuable. I was more annoyed before I learned anything about the value of the food--I had not asked for this stuff and had no place for it, nor time to sort it--but I ended up happier upon discovering that it was food that a shelter or food pantry could use, and sorted it accordingly (I did end up keeping some of it). This is not the place to harp on the boundaries issues that arose out of the food having come my way; I've addressed those issues elsewhere on those pages. I bring this case up here to demonstrate another case of falsely assigned value. Actually, a snarky comment on the part of the then-friend is quite telling: as I sorted through a second installment of boxes from this guy's kitchen, and sent most of it to the 'food pantry' bags I'd set up, I did react positively to a couple of boxes of baking soda (the green cleaner's magic ingredient). Then-friend, observing my reaction, said, "well, if I'd known that's what you'd get excited about..."

Do you ever see small kids ignore a gift and play with the box? Or cats prefer ribbons to battery-powered toys? They get it. Sometimes you need something expensive, or something the right thing costs more--and it's worth paying for. But don't throw money (or value) at stuff because someone, somewhere thinks it's valuable.