Inflation Cannot Hide on Amazon Prime

Many times, I’ve heard that the first step towards recovery from an addiction is admitting one has it. It’s not hard to admit I have become totally dependent over the years. Amazon Prime I use the app for most of my household and grocery shopping. If the item isn’t unique or new, it doesn’t matter. I use my smartphone to check if I have a shortage of that particular commodity and I can get replacements within days.

My addiction to Prime is unapologetic. I don’t want to be ashamed of my problem. You can never beat the convenience and often the best prices. The platform also offers an added benefit, which I discovered recently. I can look back at all my transactions over the years and see what I spent years ago on the exact same items I am ordering. This is an important feature for someone who cares a lot about inflation.

I decided to do an admittedly unscientific and anecdotal—yet informative and illustrative—analysis of the cost of a basket of items that I repeatedly purchased on the platform to understand how prices have moved over the past three years—i.e., since 2020 and the lockdowns that did more to benefit Amazon’s business More than anything.

My shocking discoveries about the prices are astonishing. Although annual prices can be quite high, they are still very affordable. Consumer Price Index inflation Printing has been 1.4 percent and 7.0 percent respectively for the three-year period ending December 2022. This translates to a 15.5% change in overall prices. Food at Home’s price levels have increased substantially during this time, at 3.9 percent and 6.5 percent, respectively. CPI-indexed food at home prices today are 23.7 per cent higher than January 2020, due to compounding. Food is typically a staple of our lives. accounts For the average American household these increases are important as they account for around 15% of all aftertax expenditures.

Although this isn’t an apples-to–apples comparison of household spending data, the results I get from my personal purchasing for household and food items shows that they still underestimate their effect on my household budget. For readers curious about Prime, as well as Prime customers, you might want to run the same analysis on your household. Look up your order history for 2020 and compare it with current prices.

The median household price for a sampling basket of food was $8.