how about you both read a brief history of how diamonds have infiltrated the minds and the hearts of our populace instead: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/...you might as well buy her a cz and if she does go to a jeweler, you can pull a "you've failed my trust test" line on her. you can always buy her a very expensive piece of glass later in life when you have all the fu money you need.

The area is also filled with colleges and all the nightlife and entertainment to support such a populace. 

Side note, I do have a bunch of *nice* 1 bedroom units that I rent but it's in a college town so there's a back-stop in terms of a rental populace with mommy and daddy's money to spend. 

I assume I am not in a unique position amongst the BP populace.  

If we as a populace were in large part financially educated consumers, the cost of getting consumers to use debt to buy depreciating assets and just plain unnecessary junk would be astronomically higher.

Nice thoughts, but TPTB would rather have the populace dependent on the Govt and easy to control.

Our political class is full of people who make policies that they can high-five themselves and feeeeel good about now but that have long-term, devastating effects on the populace - that they will later feel the need to "fix NOW".

Educating the populace would.The root of that problem is that the populace refused to put in the time to learn enough Economics, Law and other pertinent information to make any kind of informed decision.In fact, I don't even blame them.

I recently gave negative feedback to another couple's real estate ventures when I heard that they had gone to one of those upsell seminars and were buying some sort of tax lien software.I agree that most of the negative reactions from the general populace are just lack of financial education, but sometimes negative reactions are well deserved.Also, what kind of people are you guys surrounding yourself with? 

A smarter populace means higher pay and higher pay means you can charge more for rent.