How Much Did You Spend at Amazon This Year?

As the year winds down, I'm putting together a summary of our expenses for 2017. One of the most shocking discoveries is the amount of money we (mostly me) spent shopping. I'm ashamed to admit that we spent almost 20% of our money on "shopping". Most of it on stuff that would be considered non-essential. I bought two new laptops this year, bringing my total computers to nine. Does anyone really need that many computers? I used to justify it by printing coupons a lot, but I don't really need that many computers.

Amazon	$ spent	#items
2006	$913.92	29
2007	$1,480.41	46
2008	$2,920.07	53
2009	$658.17	44
2010	$1,506.67	40
2011	$1,166.29	42
2012	$2,512.45	49
2013	$1,336.77	55
2014	$2,178.44	67
2015	$1,750.34	65
2016	$923.15	42
2017	$3,201.32	87

Anyway, the largest culprit is Amazon. I started shopping at Amazon in 1998, and started using Prime in 2006. Over the years, it was  about 40 items a year and our average spent there was about $1750. Which I think it a lot. Well, this year the number of items doubled and the amount spent almost doubled. That doesn't even include the shopping I did at Columbia.com and Underarmour.com, or all the other websites we bought sporting goods, clothing, electronics and household supplies. But that's a story for later.


Here is how you can check how much you spent at Amazon this year:

• Log in to your Amazon account.

• Select YOUR ACCOUNT to view details
• Select Order History Downloads

• Enter the dates you want to download, then click Request Report.

• Click download, wait for report to generate
• Click Open on the download into Excel or other spreadsheet software.
• When you have your report, scroll over to column AD and click the top header to highlight the total item column, and it will show you key information at the bottom of your screen.
  
• At the bottom you can see your average per item, the count of items and the sum of the dollars spent on items.

The first step to make improvements in the future, is to measure the past. It's interesting to view the items and notice how many are non-essential. If you're like me, it's most of them. I already have that type of item or a good substitute. The problem is the retailers have great marketing strategies and have infiltrated our lives with the desire to shop. Creating awareness of your shopping habits is a first step in tackling your shopping addiction. I'll share my strategy to quit shopping next year in another blog post shortly.


Happy New Year!