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The next Amazon Prime Day event is less than a couple of weeks away, but if you want to snag legitimate deals on stuff you actually want, now is the time to prepare. All it takes is adding things to your cart and a bit of patience.
Your Cart Is Your Prime Day Secret Weapon
If you’re like me, you’ve probably got a running mental list of things you’re interested in buying. Maybe a new kitchen gadget, a smart home device, or just some nice new socks. The problem I have is that when Prime Day finally arrives, these things vanish from my mind. I’m bombarded with so many offers that it’s easy to forget what I actually need.
The solution I’ve been using for the last few years is a lot easier than you’d expect. Simply open up Amazon and start adding everything you’ve been considering buying to your cart. Any time you think of something you might want to check out during Prime Day, add it to your cart now. Don’t worry about buying anything yet. Just pile it in there. Think of it as a Prime Day wish list with a helpful built-in price checker.
How This Saves You Time and Money
When Prime Day officially kicks off, you won’t have to navigate endless pages of questionable deals. Instead, you can simply head straight to your cart. Amazon helpfully tells you if an item in your cart or the “Saved for later” section has changed in price since you last checked.
The natural inclination is to use Wish Lists for this, but they don’t give you the same price change alerts. If you don’t want tomanually check the price historyfor a bunch of items, adding them to the Shopping Cart is the easiest way to get that information.
This is handy for a few other reasons. First, it eliminates impulse buys because you’ve already curated your list. The entire point of big sale events like Prime Day is to get you to fall into the trap of buying things you don’t need just because they’re discounted. If it’s not something you need, an item that’s marked down from $150 to $100 is not a $50 savings, it’s a $100 waste. With this method, you’re not aimlessly browsing for a deal—you’re checking prices on things you’ve already identified as needs or wants.
Second, it saves you time since you’re not sifting through thousands of irrelevant sales. But maybe more importantly, ithelps you identify genuine discountson items you were going to buy anyway. Retailers love to artifically inflate prices before Prime Day so they can mark them down to the normal price as a “deal.” You’ll be able to see if that new coffee maker you’ve been eyeing has genuinely dropped in price, or if the seller is trying to trick you with a bogus deal.
The main takeaway here is to have some sort of plan going into Prime Day, which runs from July 8th to 11th this year. As mentioned, these events are fueled by impulse buys. Retailers make money from deals by convincing people to buy things they wouldn’t normally have purchased. Taking a little time now to identify the things you’re interested in buying will make Prime Day much better.
