I Stopped Tracking My Amazon Purchases in 2022 -- and Spent $1,000 More

It's a large number, but not all that shocking.

When Amazon raised the cost of a Prime membership to $139 per year, I knew that despite the increase, I was going to keep my membership. I've come to rely heavily on Amazon to order everything from clothing to snacks to household products. And I love the fact that Amazon routinely saves me a trip to the store. 

In fact, it's easy for me to justify my Prime membership because it saves me a lot of time in the course of shopping. And since I'm self-employed, the less time I have to spend driving back and forth to stores, the more I can work.

But there's a drawback to having a Prime membership, and it's free two-day shipping on orders of any size. Yes, I know this is supposed to be the main perk of the program. But that free shipping is a mixed bag, because it means you may be more likely to make impulse buys on Amazon knowing that shipping is on the house.

And speaking of impulse buys, I stopped tracking my Amazon spending somewhere around mid-2022. And I wound up making a lot of unplanned purchases as a result. Not only that, but I easily racked up an extra $1,000 in purchases in 2022 compared to 2021, and I blame my lack of accountability for some of that.

When you stray from good habits

I'm the type of person who's generally quite on top of her spending. I check my credit card balances weekly, for example, to make sure I'm not racking up uncomfortably high balances. 

Now normally, I make a point to review my Amazon orders every week. Those are paid for with my Prime Visa, and those are the only orders I put on that card, so checking my Amazon orders is akin to checking that card's balance. 

Only at some point in the middle of 2022, I stopped carefully tracking my Amazon purchases. I figured that most of those purchases were necessities, so there wasn't really a point in poring over them week in, week out. 

But in early 2023, I decided to tally up my Amazon spending in 2022 and compare it to 2021. And I found that I'd spent around $1,000 more in 2022.

Some of that additional spending can be attributed to inflation. I can say this with certainty because a lot of my recurring Amazon orders became more expensive in 2022, even though I was getting the same items. 

But all told, I easily made a good $300 worth of impulse purchases on Amazon last year. And while that's not a horrendous amount of money over 12 months, it's money I could've saved instead. 

Lesson learned

I have no plans to cancel my Prime membership or to stop shopping on Amazon. But I do hope and plan to be more careful this year, especially because inflation is still a problem. 

This isn't to say I won't make any impulse purchases on Amazon in 2023. But so far, I've done a pretty good job of sticking to only necessities, so with any luck, I'll continue to exercise self-control.