How Much Amazon's "Subscribe and Save" Can Actually Save You

We're fans of Amazon's Subscribe and Save subscription that allows you to get household items shipped to you on a regular basis, but it has always been arguable whether it actually saves you that much money. The Simple Dollar took a look at Subscribe and Save and compared it to a local warehouse club to see just what the savings might be.

After some digging around and price comparisons, The Simple Dollar crunched some numbers and found that after a lot of searching, Subscribe and Save could save money, but with a few caveats:

Overall, I saved money, but on occasion, I would see local sales that would trump the value of the “schedule and save” system. I would have saved money waiting for those sales. On the other hand, watching for those sales takes time, as you have to watch flyers every week to catch those sales.

So, what’s a person to do? The most time-effective route (while still bringing down your bills) is to just do a big comparison of prices between “Subscribe and Save” and your local warehouse club or grocery store, then subscribe to anything that’s cheaper than the regular price and not sweat the sales. However, you can certainly invest more time into the plan by comparing weekly flyers – you will absolutely save more money, but it won’t be a lot of money and it will require some time (the amount of which is really up to you).

Of course, Subscribe and Save is free for Amazon customers and you typically have to pay for warehouse clubs. Either way, the big benefit is the time you save not shopping. Once you go through the painstaking process of setting up Subscribe and Save, you don't have to do anything, whereas you'll always have to go to the store to get those discounts at a warehouse club. Head over to the Simple Dollar for more info about the whole process.

Do Amazon Mail Order Subscriptions Save Money? | The Simple Dollar

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