Goodbye, Amazon Prime

Like I said, living in Hawaii is expensive. For most of the island chain, there isn’t quick access to shopping so we rely heavily on shipping items to us. The items online are often less expensive and adding it to my cart is a lot easier than driving 40 minutes to a store. Of course we have local grocery stores but that isn’t exactly where you get the best selection for say, kids birthday party supplies. Most websites offer free shipping these days, but if you live in Hawaii, you know there is usually fine print which excludes Alaska and Hawaii. That is where Amazon Prime came in handy. We signed up for Amazon prime the day we moved back to Hawaii from the mainland and we haven’t batted an eye since. Like most subscriptions, the price has been slowly creeping up. I believe it was about $80 a year and the free shipping was worth it. Now, the price in 2024 is $139 a year. In the grand scheme of things, that isn’t bad broken up over 12 months BUT every little thing adds up. Plus, when I went on the website to see what exactly we would be giving up, I realized we don’t actually get to utilize most of the prime benefits. If you live in Hawaii you know there is no such thing as same day shipping or even 2 day shipping. Even with Amazon Prime, our ‘2 day shipping’ averages at least a week, if not longer. If I lived somewhere where we could get groceries delivered or same day shipping, heck even 2 day shipping, then I would be happily shackled to Amazon Prime for the rest of my life. Prime TV and music are not services we utilized so that wasn’t a huge sacrifice. We can still use Amazon, but have to have a minimum order of $35 to qualify for free shipping, so if we need to buy a few small items, we will just keep them in the cart until it adds up. I am not worried about the speed of shipping because it takes a week or two regardless of being an Amazon Prime member. Also, worst comes to worst, we can sign up again so I guess it isn’t that risky after all. Another added benefit of cutting the Amazon Prime cord is it will motivate me to shop locally which is good to do.