Amazon Prime has been a part of our family for a few years.
You might think that as The Thrifty Couple, our decision to spend $79 for the Prime Membership would seem like an unwise investment.
But after discussing it, researching it and realizing just how much we use Amazon for purchases from foods (non-perishables of course), household, gifts, diapers, everyday needed items and more, we finally made the dive to purchasing Amazon Prime.
And each year that it has come up, we have renewed it without hesitation because each year we have received that much value out of it – and more!.
Here’s what we have appreciated:
- It’s easy to shop online for things we need.
- Amazon’s prices have always been competitive and we only order on Amazon when it is not cheaper anywhere else. When the time comes to purchase – in the course of our research on specific items – Amazon’s price is almost always cheaper, thus we purchase through Amazon and receive it in 2 days or less.
- Shipping is free and Prime Eligible arrives in 2 days! That is HUGE! With how much work it takes to run errands, I often can order on Amazon and have it here before I can actually make it to Walmart or other store. Our schedule, homeschooling and 5 kids does not make it easy to hop in the car and grab something quick.
- Shipping is free, even if you buy a single $1 item on eligible items! There is no order minimum! This alone saved us the price of the annual membership. In the past, we would need something that would be cheaper on Amazon, but we would buy a few other items to get to the free shipping threshold (thus causing us to potentially buy items we didn’t really need). With Amazon Prime, we can buy a cheap item when it drops to a low price and not have to put other things in our cart.
- Pay only $3.99 for overnight delivery. On rare occasions we have actually paid the $3.99 for next day delivery (always an option on Prime eligible items). This has been crucial on specific items that we needed fast (next day) but was able to save a lot compared to other stores even considering the additional shipping charge.
- We have appreciated the free entertainment: movies and television shows. Seriously, they have over 40,000 Prime movies and television shows. We haven’t rented a movie in forever! The selection will also change here and there to have new options too! What this means, we don’t need to invest in cable television, rarely rent movies, and no need to purchase a DVR and DVR service so that we can watch many of our favorite shows on our time! For example, we finally started watching Downton Abbey this year. We started from Season 1 and all seasons were totally free to watch on our time, until the last season (which will probably be Prime once the next seasons starts). Considering that an annual Netflix subscription is $96, this is sorta a no-brainer as to going with Amazon instead!
- If you have a Kindle, there are 500,000 titles that you can borrow for free to read on your Kindle each month.
- The prices of foods and household in bulk are the same as a Costco or Sam’s Club and this means that you can get the warehouse prices with your Prime Membership too, but shop from home and have it at your door in 2-days or less. Many times, we receive the product the next day!
So there’s a handful of reasons why we have appreciated our Amazon Prime membership that we have paid $79 a year for. Well, we also received this email from Amazon about the price increase from $79 – $99. We read it and of course we were disappointed (who cheers for a price increase?!), but realize it is not a show-stopper for us and we will continue after ours expires and renew at $99 because the benefits are still unmatched.
We honestly are amazed they haven’t increased their costs in nine years – wow! And that’s even considering the cost of adding all the free content and streaming included as part of this membership.
The price officially increases from $79 to $99 on Friday, March 20, 2014. But you can get it for the $79 price if you purchase or start a free 30-day trial (as of the publishing of this article, Amazon still shows that your Prime membership will charge you the $79 at the end of the trial – so that may stay the same if your trial was started before the increase). Either way, if you’ve been on the edge on whether you want to give Amazon Prime a try, it might be a good time to consider it!
Head to the Amazon Prime page HERE for more information and to start a free trial!
Do you have Amazon Prime? Why or why not and do you think the benefits are worth it?
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