Damn peer pressure

I've decided that one of the reasons why I'm freaking out about my ring (other than I'm picky and a perfectionist and a wannabe princess) is that spending your life in a hospital is a great way to get ring envy.  Everywhere I look there are women with giant, gorgeous, sparkly rings.  Even the medical students (who are in massive debt) and graduate students (who make barely enough to live) generally also have large, gorgeous rings.  Obviously some of the students have significant others who aren't in school and have a nice salary, but a lot of them don't, a lot of their significant others are also students.  I would love to know how they are affording these rings!

Over the weekend I went with the lovely Doctor Whimsy to a local chain jewelry store, so that I could pick out a cut and a setting to tell Jewelry Gal.  (BTW, I picked a rectangular radiant on a trellis setting - more on this another time)  While we were there we ran into one of our medical school classmates (lets call him Over Achiever) and his girlfriend (Sweetheart) - they were also looking at rings.  I know both relatively well and Sweetheart invited us over to see the setting that she had picked out.  I was a little shocked when I saw the price tag -$1500- but for platinum setting with sidestones, not bad.  As we were there the sales person was showing them 1.3ct round of decent quality to go with it - easily another $6000+ (based on BlueNile prices).  Now I was in shock.  How in the world could Over Achiever afford such a ring?!?

I'm not sure how my classmates are paying for these rings, maybe they are just going into even more debt.  I guess when your already going to be around $150,000 in debt and your future earning potential is over 6-figures, what's another $10,000?  

I personally was raised to avoid debt like the plague.  Obviously some is unavoidable (especially while in school), but I definitely try to minimize it as much as possible.  Beau is planning on paying for my ring with money in savings (he won't let me help pay), and I'm trying to balance keeping costs down with the pressure I feel to have a ring that will look good compared to all the other rings in the hospital...  I think I'm succeeding, but there are times I feel pressure to go back to my original budget, instead of my decreased budget after choosing to work Jewelry Gal so that I can get an even bigger, better ring.