Amazon Prime Memberships - are they worth it?

    The whole concept of paying a membership fee for the privilege of shopping somewhere has bothered me over the years.
   
    After you read about my family's experience with one year of Amazon Prime, I don't care if you decide to sign up for a free 30-day membership, or not.  But here's how I've always felt about "paid membership" kinds of things:

    It doesn't always sit well with me when people tell me how much money I'll save...if only I will pay some more money to earn the privilege of saving money. 

    One year ago, we signed up for a free 30-day Amazon Prime membership. 

    We're talking completely FREE.

    I thought I'd take advantage of it for the 30 days we had in our free trial membership, and then drop it like a hot potato right before the 30 days were up.

    Well, you can probably guess what happened next.

    I began to realize how much I could save in shipping fees on the items we normally order, if we did actually have an Amazon Prime membership.  I didn't realize how much money we would be saving on shipping fees, though.

    So...a few days ago, our first year with Amazon Prime membership ($79) had finished.  I was able to print out a list of all of the items I'd purchased over the last 12 months.  After figuring out the shipping costs for each item, I was shocked to learn that we would have paid $269.36 in shipping fees last year, just based on our normal ordering habits online.  I was so surprised!  My husband agreed that we should go ahead and renew our Amazon Prime membership, so we did.

My family's purchasing habits:

    Here are some details about my family's shopping habits, just so you can compare to see if you'd save this kind of money in your own family:

• 19 items we purchased were books, and most of these supplemented our homeschooling, so they were for educational use.  Our town lost its last bookstore quite a while ago; there is one second-hand bookstore that can order some books for us, if needed, but we don't receive free shipping.
• 6 items were piano lesson books for my daughters' young piano students.  She occasionally will get a new student suddenly, and need music books for that student in 3-5 days' time.
  
• 8 items were electronic in nature:  a Kindle as a shared gift for a relative; a replacement light bulb not easily available in our small town; a Kindle Fire car charger since ours is used quite a bit in the car; a digital tablet my daughter bought for herself with her own money; a replacement battery for my younger daughter's DSLR camera (that no longer works - boo hoo); a Snowball microphone my daughters bought with their own money; a wireless clicker that my oldest daughter needed for her speeches and presentations (the local options were too expensive).
• 11 items were foods that we can't either purchase in our town, or the local price is too prohibitive.
• 6 items were gifts or decorations, either for birthdays or Christmas, or my parents' recent 50th wedding anniversary.
• 2 items were clothing and a purse.  Neither of the two items we purchased online could be found in our local town.
• There were some miscellaneous items as well:  natural air freshener I can only buy online or at Trader Joe's (75 minutes away from our house); glass test tubes for the girls' science experiments; a brand of mechanical pencils no longer available in our town; a student driver magnet to warn others that we had a student driver in our vehicle...ha!  Just some odds and ends that aren't available where we live.

How do I decide what to purchase online . . . or locally?

    The main point I want to make here is that I don't just randomly order items on a whim.  Foods we order online come out of our grocery budget; I only order foods on Amazon.com that I cannot purchase in my town, or are 2-3 times the price in the store vs. buying online.

    Everything we purchased over the last 12 months using Amazon Prime were items that neatly fit into our tight budget:  groceries, parts to repair electronic items or make them useable; gifts for relatives and friends; and books for either our homeschooling or the small group women's Bible study I'm in.

    We are a frugal family and generally stick to our budget.

    The other factoid about my family, that might help you understand why we buy items online from time to time, is that several in my family have very sensitive skin.  That means that I purchase special shampoo that is very expensive here in my town.  We don't use the "normal" beauty and health products, because my family's skin just can't tolerate them. 

    We also eat a low-glycemic diet, so that requires us to purchase some items online if they can't be found in our town.  For example, there were two types of crackers that we could eat, sold here in town, but then one was no longer available.  So, we order that type of cracker (Finn Crisp Sourdough Rye Crackers) online.

    When at all possible, I try to shop locally and put my dollars back into our community.  It's just a great way to support local businesses!

What are Amazon.com's normal shipping fees?

    Yes, it's true that for some items on Amazon.com, you may spend $25 and receive free shipping on that order.  We did this for a number of years, but we found that fewer and fewer items were qualifying for free shipping with a $25 order. 

    We also found that with Amazon's free shipping for orders over $25, the item might not be delivered for 2-3 weeks.  While some people can plan far in advance to work with longer shipping times, it doesn't work for everyone.  (My daughters receive new music students occasionally, so we don't want to make new students wait 2-3 weeks for their new music books.)

Will I automatically renew our Amazon Prime membership every year?

    I really don't know. 

    For right now, this is working well for us.

    If we were to suddenly move to a much larger city, where more purchasing options were available, we probably wouldn't find as much of a need to participate with Amazon Prime.  But who knows?

    If you decide to give Amazon Prime a try with their completely free 30-day trial membership from clicking through on this page, you'll be using an affiliate link.  It won't cost you a thing, but I'll receive a small amount of $$ that will help support this website.  Just so you know.  That's not my purpose about telling you about Amazon Prime, though.  I just wanted you to know how it's working for our family, in case you've been wondering if it's a good fit for your own.

    And if you decide that Amazon Prime just isn't worth your hard-earned money, that's fine, too.

    I'm really curious about your experiences with using Amazon Prime, if you've subscribed to it in the past. 
   
    Would you mind letting me know in the Comments, below, if you've used Amazon Prime in the past - and how that went?  Thanks.  I always appreciate hearing from Joy In Our Journey readers!

    In the interest of full disclosure, some of the links in my posts are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I receive an affiliate commission. I only recommend products I use personally. Your purchases through these links help support Joy In Our Journey. I humbly thank you for your support!

---