The Money Mustache Community
Learning, Sharing, and Teaching => Ask a Mustachian => Topic started by: squashroll on June 09, 2013, 10:38:05 AM
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Our Amazon Prime membership is going to expire in a few days. Let it go or renew; thoughts/opinions please.
thanks--
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Depends on the use you get out of it.
Why does our opinions of it matter?
Evaluate if the cost has been worth it to you over th past year, and if it will save or cost you money over the next year.
/disclaimer: I am an Amazon Prime member.
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Aside from buying things on it, I like amazon prime's movie/tv selection. It's my go to for streaming, instead of netflix (comes out to be about same price but amazon I get more in my opinion). So it replaced my cable bill.
That or if you take a class at a college, you could get a student trial for it, this isn't cheaper but if you are already a student; it's a way to get it free for a year.
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Let it expire and invest the $80 you save. I know Amazon quite well, having been their customer for 10 years. I gave Prime a try and I was pretty disappointed. The free expedited shipping is nice, but you'd have to order a lot of stuff to recoup your $80 investment and get any sort of decent return on it. I don't know about your situation, but when I order something, it's not urgent and I can stand to wait a week or 2 for my stuff to get here.
As a Prime Member, you can also borrow 1 Kindle e-book per month, but only if the author allows lending. In theory, that sounds awesome. In practice, there are very, very few quality e-books that can be downloaded for free that way.
As for their free movie/TV-show streaming selection - personally, I was very disappointed. For example, they didn't have any Zooey Deschanel titles, and the only Bruce Willis movie you could stream with your fancy-scmancy membership was "Hudson Hawk." O_o
In the end, the choice is up to you, but I would advise against it.
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I don't have cable at all, and I live overseas. So Prime is a major source of entertainment, both via their free video content, and their free Kindle rentals. Additionally, I do much of my shopping via Amazon for things that I can't find here (and though some people say it hasn't worked for them, my Prime subscription carried over to Amazon.de so I can use it on both sites). Of course, if you are typically spending more than $25 (?), then most shipments are free anyway, so that's something to consider.
But for me? I save that $79 probably 3x over at least.
Oh, and if you aren't going to use the streaming content, sign up for Amazon mom. (Anyone can do it; I am not a mom.) It's free for 3 months, I think, and then it is extended each time you purchase qualifying items. Depending on your shopping habits, you might get some extensions. (Again, it isn't all baby and kid stuff, though most qualifying items are. I got a couple extensions for things like a new pizza cutter and some underwear.) If nothing else, it's a few months free, allowing you to hold on to that $79 a little bit longer.
My Mom membership didn't give me access to the free streaming content though.
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It's easy to share the free 2-day shipping benefits with others. If that's the extent of your use of prime, you can look into getting a friend or relative to share their membership with you. If you use prime for instant video, Kindle lending library, or other benefit that only the paying member gets, then you may want your own membership.
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Well worth it for us. Love the 2 day shipping and we have 2 kindles in the house, plus stream free videos on our roku.
YMMV
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Thanks for the input, all. Appreciate--