If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably read at least 2 articles in the past week about Amazon Prime and whether it was worth it or not. Just recently Amazon announced that they were raising their rate for Amazon Prime, from $79 to $99 per year. Of course, if you lock in your rate now, you can save the $20 before it goes up (clever marketing ploy). The $99 question on everybody’s mind is…is it truly worth it?

You can spend a lot of time and research, crunching lots of numbers and running different scenarios, all to be left in a daze as to whether or not you should signup. The short answer to whether or not you’ll save money on Amazon Prime is probably not, or it’ll be more of a wash. Let’s break down some simple numbers:

Amazon Prime will cost $99/year starting March 20^th. That’s $8.25 per month and it gets you: ‘Free’ 2 day shipping on a lot of items (notice I didn’t say all or most), access to borrowing Kindle books for free and Amazon Instant Video; which as you’ll quickly find out, is lacking in its offerings. The bulk of Amazon Prime members only take advantage of the 2 day shipping options, as the Kindle books and Amazon Video are more like cherries on top, extra sales pitches to get you to buy. The question now is whether or not Prime Eligible items are cheaper than regular items. I did a quick search and this is what I found:

As you see, sometimes the Prime item was cheaper when you factored in shipping, other times it wasn’t. I saw the largest savings on dog food, perhaps because it’s a much heavier item. Just remember, you’re still paying $8.25 per month to get these savings.

I’ve had Amazon Prime in the past and noticed an increase in the number of ‘impulse buys’ I made, which should be taken into consideration. Amazon Prime makes it way too easy for me to purchase items. The whole ‘one-click checkout, will arrive in 2 days’ feature brought impulse buying to a whole new level.

When considering Amazon Prime, try to take all their advertisements and promises of free, 2 day shipping with a grain of salt. Realize that the break-even point for the $99 per year is probably a little higher than you think. Consider that you may not save nearly as much money, or time for that matter with Amazon Prime. Try to run some numbers on your own, look at the prices you pay for common household items and then consider how much they are on Amazon. Every situation will be different! Of course, it could never hurt to try. Amazon does offer a free 30 day trail subscription so you could always try it out to see if you got a benefit or not!

Finally, you could also consider sharing Amazon Prime with a friend/family. There’s no harm in sharing the love!

And now if you’ll excuse me, I have some Amazon shopping to do…

Thanks for reading! Here’s another you might enjoy:

Having an attitude of never paying full price (without at least trying!)