It’s Prime Day on Amazon.
If I were a smart blogger, this post would be packed with affiliate links to gadgets, kitchen tools, camping gear, smart home devices, and twenty-seven things you didn’t know you desperately needed until five minutes ago.
I’m not going to do that.
Mostly because you can find those posts literally everywhere. If you want to know which vegetable peeler will change your life forever, the internet has you covered.
Instead, I’m going to tell you why I mostly don’t care about Prime Day.
Actually, if I’m being completely honest, I sort of hate it.
Not just Prime Day, either. Black Friday. Cyber Monday. Memorial Day sales. Labor Day sales. Fourth of July sales. Presidents Day sales. Random Tuesday Because We Have Too Much Inventory sales.
At this point I’m convinced the only day retailers refuse to have a sale is Sale Day.
I Buy Things When I Need Them
My philosophy is pretty simple.
I buy things when I need them, not because someone else tells me today is the day I’m supposed to buy them.
Okay… that’s mostly true.
Sometimes I’ll wait for something I already want to go on sale. But those discounts usually happen at completely random times, not during the giant shopping holidays everyone gets excited about.
Years ago, I really wanted a pair of Klipsch Reference tower speakers.
They normally sold for about $600 each, or roughly $1,200 for the pair.
There was absolutely no universe in which I was going to spend $1,200 on speakers.
So I did what any financially cautious audio nerd would do. I put them on my Amazon wish list and forgot about them.
Well… tried to forget about them.
One day Amazon emailed me to let me know something on my wish list had gone on sale.
Actually, Amazon emails me almost every day. That’s beside the point.
The speakers had dropped from $600 each to $400 each.
That saved me $400 on the pair.
Suddenly I could buy two speakers for only $200 more than I’d originally been willing to spend on one.
That was a price I could live with.
I bought them.
Years later, I still love them.
The funny part?
That deal happened nowhere near Prime Day.
Apparently I’m Supposed to Be Shopping
What really gets me isn’t Prime Day itself.
It’s everyone else’s excitement.
Friends tell me about all the incredible bargains they found.
Family members ask what I bought.
An ex once became genuinely frustrated that I wasn’t even browsing the Prime Day deals.
Browsing.
Not buying.
Browsing.
Apparently simply existing without scrolling through pages of discounted waffle makers was somehow offensive.
I already spend enough time talking myself out of keeping up with the Joneses.
The last thing I need is the Joneses insisting I keep up with them.
Look, you’re allowed to manage your money however you want.
Buy the air fryer.
Buy the espresso machine.
Buy the inflatable kayak shaped like a dragon.
I genuinely hope they make you happy.
But I’m also allowed to decide not to buy anything.
You don’t get to criticize me because my shopping cart is empty.
It’s almost like people take it personally when I choose not to spend money.
The Ads Know Me Too Well
Then there are the ads.
Oh, the ads.
Not only are real people encouraging me to spend money, now algorithms are joining the conversation.
And unfortunately…
They’re pretty good at it.
Take my Blackstone griddle.
I didn’t wake up one morning thinking, “You know what my life is missing? A giant flat steel cooking surface.”
Then I saw an ad.
And I thought…
Well…
My grill is kind of falling apart.
It really was.
Pieces were literally falling off of it.
Also, because I’m blind, cooking on a traditional grill can be a little challenging.
- Food falls through the grates.
- Getting a spatula underneath burgers isn’t always easy.
- Cleaning the grates is annoying.
Yes, yes, I know.
First-world problems.
Still, they were my problems.
Then I realized a flat-top griddle solved almost all of them.
So I bought one.
It wasn’t even during a holiday sale.
I also skipped the giant 36-inch model and bought the 28-inch version instead.
It’s still more than big enough for me, and it cost almost half as much.
That’s the part I’m proud of.
Not that I bought the thing.
That I bought the version that actually fit my needs instead of convincing myself bigger automatically meant better.
The Most Dangerous Purchase
Electronics are my weakness.
Always have been.
I love gadgets.
New radios.
Speakers.
Computers.
Apple products.
Anything with buttons.
Especially if some of those buttons make satisfying clicking noises.
When I hear about a product, I don’t even pay much attention to the percentage off.
I look at the actual price and ask myself one question:
Would I pay this much for this?
Sometimes the answer is yes.
Sometimes the answer is no.
The really dangerous moment is when I say yes to something I didn’t even know I wanted five minutes earlier.
That is a terrible time to make a financial decision.
So Please Leave Me Alone
This Prime Day, I’m going to resist.
I’m not buying the fancy grilling tools.
The ones I already own still flip burgers just fine.
I’m not buying the newest Apple Watch.
I can barely remember to charge and wear my third-generation Apple Watch.
Owning the eleventh generation isn’t going to magically transform me into someone who remembers to wear a watch.
I’ve gone camping exactly once in the last thirty years.
I do not need tents.
I do not need sleeping bags.
I do not need solar generators.
I definitely do not need a king-sized inflatable mattress that somehow packs into a backpack.
I’ll just borrow the camping gear my friends bought during last year’s Prime Day and have been storing in their garage ever since.
It’s cheaper.
And really…
What else are friends for?
Well… About That…
P.S.
I’d love to end this story by telling you I resisted every temptation.
I can’t.
Today I learned I could get my General Mobile Radio Service (GMRS) license for just $35.
I’ll write more about GMRS another time, but by the time you read this I expect I’ll have a shiny new call sign.
Don’t tell me the government always moves slowly.
Of course, a license isn’t much use without radios.
Thanks to my friend Russ, I discovered a pair of GMRS handheld radios for about $50.
The best part is that one GMRS license covers my entire immediate family.
Assuming, of course, I can convince everyone to actually remember our call sign before they key the microphone.
And yes…
They were on a Prime Day deal.
Apparently even when I’m trying to ignore Prime Day, Prime Day has other plans.
What About You?
Now it’s your turn.
What are you not buying on Prime Day?
Tell me in the comments. And if you’re subscribed to my email newsletter, you don’t even have to visit the website. Just reply to the email. That’s one of my favorite things about the newsletter. If using a website feels like work, email has been around for decades. Everybody knows how to reply to an email.
Now for the important part.
The first person whose answer makes me laugh so hard that I wet myself—and I’m not talking about a few embarrassing drops here. I’m talking a complete, catastrophic, call-the-cleaning-crew emptying of my bladder—will receive, paid for entirely out of my own pocket, the most advanced cat toy in the world.
The! Most! Advanced!
Engineers literally spent months solving all the world’s biggest cat toy problems. I don’t know what those problems were, but apparently they solved them.
Even better, for a limited time, if you buy two, you get two free.
That means William Catner can afford to part with one for your cat.
But only if you make me wet myself.
Finally, if you enjoyed this post, please share it with your friends.
The world needs me.
The only problem is that the world doesn’t know it yet.
I’m counting on you to fix that.
Thank you.
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