Prime Day's A-Comin'!

 My family will tell you this is one of the most anticipated dates (I call it a holiday 😂) of the year for me! It's usually on my calendar in such a way that I avoid overlapping with any other events. This might confuse you if you know me well because, frankly, I'm not a big shopper. My daughter will tell you it's like pulling teeth to get me to a store with her. What I do love though is finding a good deal! And this day (ok, it's become days now) is one of the best times of the year to score deals. I try to accomplish all of my Christmas and birthday shopping for the year during this event. Imagine getting close to a holiday and not having to stress about gifts because they're already covered! That's the beauty of Prime Day!

 The thing is, Prime Day is sort of an exclusive thing. Not everyone can participate. You've got to be a part of a special club, Amazon Prime Members. Here's the good news, though: You can join the club too! In fact, it doesn't have to cost you a penny to take part in all the excitement coming up on Prime Day in a couple of weeks. Amazon offers a 30-Day free trial of Prime so you can try it out and see if it's worth it for you. Then, if it's just not your thing, cancel before your first charge and not a penny out of pocket.

 They have several different membership options available. If you, or a loved one, is 18-24, they should definitely sign up for the Young Adult Prime Membership. They get their first six months free and then it is 50% off. They also get cash back without needing a Prime Visa, 5% on regular purchases and 10% on Prime Day!

 Some who receive government assistance (like SNAP, EBT, Medicaid, etc.) may qualify for a Prime Access Membership at only $6.99/mo. 

 Finally, everyone else can choose between paying $14.99/mo or $139/year + tax. If you pay yearly, you save over $40 each year, so if you can swing it this is the way to go. 

 So, what does a Prime membership have to offer? You can check out all the benefits here if you want to see the whole list. Here's a few perks though that we use regularly, or might be in the near future:

Free Shipping

 With a Prime membership, you get free shipping on anything sold directly by Amazon. There are some products listed on Amazon that are actually sold by outside shops that may have shipping charges (some still have free shipping) but they are clearly called out in the item's thumbnail, the item page, and the checkout process. Most of the time you will get free two-day shipping, which is two days from the time it ships, not from the time you click "buy." Occasionally there are things that don't ship for a while and the arrival estimates are clearly posted on the item's page. Sometimes an item will qualify for free One-Day or even Same-Day shipping, and that's awesome! There are those out there who have concerns about the extra environmental impact of all these deliveries and I'm happy to say that Amazon has considered this and offers an alternative in their "Amazon Day" shipping option. You pick the day of the week that works best for you and then choose this shipping option when you check out. They will save up all of your items and ship them once a week, decreasing the environmental impact. They even incentivize this option by giving you additional cash back when you use your Prime Visa. 

Prime Visa

 Yep, I've got one of those too. It's one of my favorite credit cards even though it only gives cash back instead of points, and that's not a referral link - I just want you to know about it. The reason I love it is they turn those points around FAST! If you buy something on Amazon, before you can say, "lickety-split" you've got award points available to redeem on another purchase. Ok, it's not instant, but it's a whole lot faster than other cards that make you wait until your statement ends, or worse the end of the year! Almost every time I purchase something on Amazon I click the "Use Amazon Visa rewards points" option. I earn 5% on everything I buy on Amazon in addition to a bunch of other benefits I'll outline in a future post. The reason I mention it now is that if you sign up for this card today and you're approved, you'll have it in time to get 7% cash back on no-rush delivery items during Prime Day as well as a $200 instant Amazon gift card that would more than cover your first year's membership fee. In the last year I've redeemed more than $600 in Amazon Visa reward points, don't do the math to figure out how much that means I've spent... What I'm getting at though is that it's a super useful tool, especially with NO ANNUAL FEE!

Amazon Photos

 Amazon Photos is one of the biggest values in our Prime membership! We have almost 300,000 photos stored in our Amazon Photos account. We started a digital photography hobby when my first son was born and my husband's work let him borrow a digital camera for a couple of weeks. We decided after that it was worth investing in our own, and now we have an extensive catalog of memories! This tool gives us an online backup, a way to share our photos with friends and family (we can send pictures to my Grandmother's Alexa device for example), and a phenomenal search engine. Our photos are AI tagged so I can click on a person and get all the pictures of them. I can search by year, month, or even day. Or I can search by topic like "snow" or "forest." As a matter of fact, that's how I get most of the pictures I use on this blog! With Prime you get unlimited photo storage and up to 5GB of video storage. I don't think they counted on us when they made this unlimited! 

 If you decide you'd like to get your photos out of digital prison and print them, you can do so through Amazon Printing which will get you 4x6s starting at $0.17ea or other photo gifts. Or you can use my favorite photo gift website, Shutterfly. Linked directly through Amazon photos, you can get a 45% Prime discount off anything in addition to free shipping on purchases over $35. If you have a Costco membership though, you can link your accounts to get 51% off and free shipping over $30. Shutterfly has amazing deals all the time. Their quality is great and I'm happy to recommend them!

Prime Video

 Do you need yet another streaming service. No, no you don't, but you might enjoy it anyways, and it's included in your Prime membership so it's no extra money out of pocket! Just like their competitors, Prime Video has plenty of "Prime Originals," some that are pretty good - my husband especially enjoys Reacher. They have TONS of other TV shows, many that are not on any other service I've found. Some I've enjoyed include: Chuck, House, and Bones (probably my favorite non-Star Trek show out there). Lots of movies on there too like: The Hobbit, Forrest Gump, and even Monty Python and the Holy Grail. There's a bunch of interesting documentaries too. I really enjoyed The Secret Life of the Cruise. It's not a salacious "Lower Decks" kind of show, but one that actually looks at what it takes to run a floating city. In addition, if they don't have a movie available free with Prime, you can usually rent or buy it for a small fee. Think Blockbuster or Red Box but you don't even have to leave your house.

 They keep adding bonuses and value to the Prime membership and I haven't taken advantage of all that they have to offer yet. Here's a few:

Grocery Delivery

 I've very much enjoyed my Walmart+ grocery delivery, but sometimes they don't have something I need, like celery root, and sometimes Amazon has better prices if you can believe it! Amazon delivers through multiple stores and they each have their own delivery prices/rules. 

 Amazon Fresh, Whole Foods and other local retailers (like Metropolitan Market for me) are all covered under the Amazon Prime Grocery Delivery plan with costs an additional $9.99/mo. After this fee, all of your grocery orders (over $35) receive free delivery. Amazon Fresh is not actually available in my area, but they now offer Whole Foods and Metropolitan Market, both of which are wonderful, high-end stores that until recently wouldn't deliver to me. Being high-end, you'd think I wouldn't be interested since I'm looking for the best grocery prices, but you'd be wrong! Whole foods has amazing produce and their prices are very competitive, especially for organic options. Their leeks and mushrooms both showed up as being cheaper than Walmart, WinCo, and Costco when I checked last week, and they are the only store that delivers that carries celery root, one of my favorite low-carb potato substitutes. For a limited time you can enjoy a 90-day free trial of this service with your Prime membership.

 Amazon also offers a free GrubHub+ membership (a $9.99/month value). With this service you can have groceries or restaurant take out delivered for free, or receive 5% cash back on pickup orders. They also feature special offers like $10 off a $20 purchase for Prime Day. You simply link your Amazon and Grub Hub accounts and it will prompt you to activate your free membership. This service operates very much like Uber Eats or Door Dash.

 In addition, Amazon offers a great deal of grocery items on their same-day delivery page where you can get groceries the same day if ordered early, or first thing the next morning when you order later in the day. What kinds of things do they have cheap? Well, I found this page of spices all under $2, ketchup for $0.06/oz (the best price I've found), and parmesan cheese (kraft style) for only $0.34/oz. Lots of these are also available for a current promotion to get an additional 10% off when you buy 4 or more from a list of items. That's what we call savings stacking, and that' what I'm all about with shopping!

Amazon Music

 I've used Spotify pretty much forever. All of my playlists are on it, and it will take something serious - even more serious than my husband losing his job - to get me to cancel it. That said, we still use Amazon Music in our house as well. My Spotify is linked to my Alexa devices, but it can only be used by one person at a time. If I'm listening to music in the sitting room and my husband wants to listen to music while he's taking a shower, yes - we're music people, then he says, "Echo, play Crowder on Amazon Music." This way it doesn't steal the music away from me and he can keep listening! My grandmother listens to hymns and gospel music on her Alexa device through Amazon Music - yes, my 88 year old grandmother! If I'm listening to Spotify while I'm driving in my car, my son can use Amazon Music at home. Prime members get access to a library of over 100 million songs that can be shuffled, but not played specifically. They also have a huge list of podcasts including one of my recent favorites, Points for Normal People from Katie's Travel Tricks. If you're not into shuffling, you can upgrade to Amazon Music Unlimited for $10.99/mo and have a service very similar to Spotify Premium which costs $11.99/mo for their individual plan.

Prime Reading

 Prime members have a library of over 1,000 books, magazines, comics, etc. that they can read for free, some of which also have Audible narration features. While a Kindle device is handy for these (and likely to go on sale for Prime Day), it is not required as you can read books on any device like a phone or a computer with the Kindle app. 

 Amazon First Reads gives Prime members a free book every month from a special list.

 If you're an avid reader and those options just aren't enough, you'll want to check out Kindle Unlimited which currently has a 3-month free trial going on. For $11.99/mo after your free trial you'll have access to more than 4 MILLION titles! For someone like my daughter-in-law who read 100 books in 100 days this year (while finishing her bachelor's degree!) this is the way to go!

RxPass

 This is a benefit of Prime membership I haven't tried, but I probably will next year when our insurance changes. For $5/mo you can get UNLIMITED prescriptions from their list of more than 50 common prescriptions. At least three medications that our family takes on a regular basis are on this list. For medications that are not on the list, they have Rx Savings which can get you up to 80% off. You can search for your medications, and they will show you the Amazon price as well as prices from all your local pharmacies with their discount. If you'd rather shop at CVS, you can print out the Amazon discount card and take it there to get a better price, but the Amazon price is probably going to be the best. Finally, when purchasing through Amazon Pharmacy, they will automatically apply any manufacturer coupons available for your prescription! Gone are the days when you have to go out and search for them yourself, they are all available right there in your Amazon cart!

Sharing

 No, you don't have to give your husband your password! Just share your Prime benefits with him, or one other adult like your kid or Mom. Amazon will let you share your benefits with (at least) one other person. Some benefits vary in their sharing options.

Gas

 Amazon Prime membership can save you on gas? Maybe! They don't have a lot of options near me, but if you usually use a BP, Amoco, or AmPm gas station you can get $0.10 off per gallon, or $0.20 off on Fridays, using the earnify app.

Here's the Thing: We've been Amazon Prime members pretty much since it existed. I save hundreds of dollars on shipping alone every year. Throw in all the other perks, and it's totally worth it to me!

* I am an Amazon Associate and when you purchase or sign up for something through links in this post I will receive a small bonus. This does not change your price at all, it just helps support what I'm doing on the Salty Zebra Blog.