Amazon Prime Day Hacks and Budgeting Tips for Emotional Shoppers

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Speaker 3 Deal hunting is a time-honored tradition of American consumerism.

Speaker 3 On the eve of one of the biggest shopping events of the year, yes, Prime Day, do you know how to find the deals that are actually worth it and how to rein yourself in from overspending?

Speaker 3 Welcome to NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast, where you send us your money questions and we answer them with the help of our genius nerds. I'm Sean Piles.

Speaker 3 This episode, my co-host Elizabeth Aiola and I talk with a listener who's struggling to manage their budget and get their arms around their emotional spending. But first, listeners, an announcement.

Speaker 3 We're working on a new segment called Budget Rehab, and we need your help to make it happen.

Speaker 3 If you want us nerds to look over your budget with a fine-toothed comb and give you our thoughts and tips, head to the show description and click on the link to the Google form and submit your info.

Speaker 3 You can even submit your budget totally anonymously if you want.

Speaker 3 And speaking of budgets, another summer is upon us, and along with the barbecues, family vacations, and uncomfortable sweating, the annual event that is Amazon's Prime Day is knocking at our doors.

Speaker 3 So we've got the scoop on what's new about Prime Day this year and some tips so you can find the best deals amid the sea of discounts.

Speaker 3 Joining us to talk about this is someone who knows Prime Day from the inside out, Jamil Ghani, the VP of Amazon Prime. Jameel, welcome to Smart Money.

Speaker 4 Hi, thank you for having me.

Speaker 3 Sure thing. So let's start by talking about what is new with Prime Day this year beyond the fact that it's actually four days this year.

Speaker 4 Well, the number one thing is what you said. It's four days long.

Speaker 4 And we've doing that because our members have told us the number one thing they want is more time, more time to produce literally millions of deals across 35 categories.

Speaker 4 We also are dropping top deals every midnight throughout the event, which kind of drive really, really sharp savings on top brands that you love.

Speaker 4 In certain times of the event, we'll also have deals dropping every five minutes.

Speaker 4 Another thing I'm really excited about is we're making it easier for our members to shop those millions of deals with more AI-powered tools. Hey, I'm into photography.

Speaker 4 I'm looking for accessories that are less than $100, or I'm trying to remodel my living room, mid-century modern, and it'll come back with deals that match that natural language query.

Speaker 4 So across the entire store, there's going to be more deals. It's a longer event and then more ways that personalize it and make it easier for you to find exactly what's right for you.

Speaker 3 So it might take a bit of upfront organizing to think through what I might need around the house and then what might be kind of fun to add on.

Speaker 4 I think that's how you get the most out of these events. And they're meant to save you money.

Speaker 4 And so I think the best way to save money is know what you need and you want and kind of go in with a plan.

Speaker 4 And whether you set up the wish lists and things like showing up with that handwritten note or an Apple note or whatever is, I think, the best way to approach the event because we understand the event can be overwhelming.

Speaker 4 For our younger members, exciting news happening now is we've reinvented the young adult program. This is a 50% off membership for folks that are 18 to 24.

Speaker 4 And we're announcing with this reinvention, a limited time offer of 5% off. And during prime day, that 5% goes to 10%.

Speaker 3 I saw that Amazon also has these invite-only deals. Can you describe how that works?

Speaker 4 Yeah, so you can imagine some items are hard to come by from an inventory standpoint, particularly when you're offering them as sort of screaming deals.

Speaker 4 And so this is a program that we launched a couple of years ago, which is you simply register your interest in a deal, whether it's on an electronics device or apparel or beauty.

Speaker 4 And then when those go live, you get entered into a lottery to win a ticket to buy that item. Then you have a certain amount of time to claim that ticket and get that deal.

Speaker 4 It's not hundreds of thousands of items. It's a more curated selection, but it adds a little bit of additional fun.

Speaker 3 I'm wondering also if there are certain categories that tend to be more heavily discounted during Prime Day.

Speaker 3 you know, I'm thinking about how we often see deals on TVs and other electronics during Black Friday. Is there an equivalent for Prime Day, or is it just so broad that kind of everything is on sale?

Speaker 4 Yeah, it's a great question, Sean. I think historically, it was more focused on sort of the typical

Speaker 4 big deal event that you see for a Black Friday or Cyber Monday. So electronics were really popular.
But the reality is Prime Day has changed a lot over the last couple of years.

Speaker 4 years, particularly during the pandemic, when folks, you and me, were all home. We needed kind of everything.

Speaker 4 And so so we transformed prime day into a sales and savings event across the entire store so now today it's 35 categories hundreds of thousands of deals in each of those categories so you can shop from everyday essentials and non-perishables and also perishables if you shop whole foods and fresh they also have deals going on all the way through apparel and furniture and beauty and all the way on to electronics so that's why i think that list is really important because it can be overwhelming if you kind of go in sight unseen.

Speaker 4 But when you know, like my family knows, we've got another school year coming up, you know, it's also a kickoff to back to school, back to college.

Speaker 4 And so, we know those are things we're going to need. And so, that's always on our list.

Speaker 4 Some folks are saving up for that big TV purchase, or Beats headphones, or Yeti bottles, or Dyson vacuum cleaners. And so, all of that will be on sale too.

Speaker 4 So, it's become so much more than just your typical sort of electronics door buster type sale.

Speaker 3 Well, Jamil, I do have to ask you as a final question. What are you buying on Prime Day?

Speaker 4 Well, with young kids, it's a combination of diapers and wipes, which we know we will go through. Our one-year-old is still in that, very much in that stage.

Speaker 4 We will be getting ready for back to school with a fourth grader and a kindergartner starting in school for the first time. And so backpacks and paper and art supplies.

Speaker 4 I do get a jump on holiday shopping, even with birthdays. And then obviously the holidays coming up.
So gifts for my family and friends and things like that. We are always in search of summer fun.

Speaker 4 So the girls have asked for a slip and slide because it's been really warm in lots of places, including Seattle. So that's on the list.

Speaker 4 Inevitably, I will admit, I do find some things that I'm like, oh, you know, that sounds like a really good deal. I do think I need a ping pong set or whatever it is.

Speaker 3 You got to have some fun when you're shopping too.

Speaker 4 You have to remember also, we have savings on OneMedical. There's savings on Prime Video videos, you know, that there.
You can go all the way to Amazon devices.

Speaker 4 Like it really is all of the Amazon businesses come together in this one celebration of our members.

Speaker 3 Well, Jameel Ghani, VP of Amazon Prime, thank you so much for coming on Smart Money and sharing your tips with us.

Speaker 4 I really appreciate it. Thanks, Sean.

Speaker 3 I also wanted to mention that we have some excellent articles on NerdWallet's website that can help you folks listening make the most of Prime Day and other online shopping events.

Speaker 3 But I will mention three quick tips for you. First, some of the best deals are on stuff that isn't super flashy.

Speaker 3 I'm talking about household items like garbage bags, teeth whitening strips, and hair care products. Second, compare prices beforehand to know how much of a deal you're actually getting.

Speaker 3 We recommend using tools like the browser extension Camel Camel Camel, which tracks prices on Amazon over time. And finally, you know you should be doing it anyway.

Speaker 3 Set a budget and know how much you can comfortably spend. All right.
We're about to get to this episode's money question segment where Elizabeth and I help a listener unpack their spending habits.

Speaker 3 But first, listeners, listeners, you know the drill. Send us your money questions.
Leave us a voicemail or text us on the nerd hotline at 901-730-6373. That's 901-730-NERD.

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Speaker 3 We are back and answering your money questions to help you make smarter financial decisions.

Speaker 3 This episode, we're talking with a listener, Catherine, who wants some help getting a grip on their spending and budgeting. Catherine, welcome to Smart Money.

Speaker 5 Hi, thank you so much.

Speaker 3 Great to have you on. So I'd like to start by hearing about your financial life at a high level.
So right now, thinking about your money, what makes you feel proud?

Speaker 3 What maybe makes you squirm a little bit?

Speaker 5 I'm not really a numbers person, so money is one of those kind of difficult topics anyway.

Speaker 5 But I do have a little bit of pride in the fact that my partner and I have been working with a financial planner for a few years. So, we do have our big picture money plan under wraps.

Speaker 5 I mean, I think we feel we have like a pretty good sense of investing

Speaker 5 and a general sense of like six months out budgeting.

Speaker 5 The stuff that makes me squirm is actually

Speaker 5 my personal relationship to money and just kind of how I approach it and what kind of emotions come up and the questions that I have in terms of prioritizing and making decisions and the guilt that I feel when I buy something or

Speaker 5 how to decide where my money goes. And it feels kind of silly, but it also feels kind of like a really big question.

Speaker 5 So I thought I'd reach out to you guys to see if there's a way we could talk about it.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Well, what you're describing, it might sound silly, but it's really common.

Speaker 3 A lot of people have feelings of guilt and shame around how they spend their money because they think they quote unquote should be doing something different or better. And we can get into that.

Speaker 7 So what is the current budgeting system that you use for your money? Do you have a budgeting system or do you kind of just pay yourself and what's left over? That's what I do, by the way.

Speaker 7 You didn't ask, but I'm telling you. But anyway, tell me what you do.

Speaker 5 My personal budgeting system doesn't really exist.

Speaker 7 Interesting.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 3 All right. Well.
Talk with us a little more about your income and expenses because that's what your budget is made of. So what do you have coming in and going out on a regular basis?

Speaker 3 You had filled out a budgeting spreadsheet for us a bit before, so that's been helpful as a jumping off point.

Speaker 3 But how do you think about what you have as regular expenses on a monthly or even weekly basis?

Speaker 5 So my regular income is from my job. It's not a high-earning job, but I'm contributing to our household and covering rent, basically.
My husband is looking for a job.

Speaker 5 And his intention is to get a high-earning job. He's been really, really working towards that, but he he just finished his PhD last year.
And so there's been this sort of expected long buffer period.

Speaker 5 And we have

Speaker 5 investments that we've been working with and living off of

Speaker 5 for this past year. And then we have an additional income source that comes in quarterly that kind of helps buffer a little bit of our spending.
But we don't, we can't use that.

Speaker 5 We just have it as like an emergency fund. So what we're using for our living is my income and these investments.

Speaker 3 So you're selling off investments to cover some ongoing expenses. Are you accounting for tax liability when you're selling those off, putting aside some money?

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 3 That's good to hear. And when you've worked with your financial planner, and they've looked at your income and expenses and financial goals.

Speaker 5 What have they said about how you're managing your money on a daily daily basis do they have any suggestions for you we've spent time on the big picture and we just haven't really done work with them particularly on the small picture so yeah i feel like i've kind of been left to my own devices on that a little bit i know you are partnered and i know you said you don't have a budget but does your husband work with a budget i think so he's very very structured Yeah, I don't know his budget, actually.

Speaker 5 That's an interesting question. I probably should know what he's working with.

Speaker 5 well if you're comfortable sharing how do you guys approach managing your finances as a couple or do you manage separately we're very comfortable talking about everything I get overwhelmed talking about money and so he handles most of it and so I don't feel like I really I hate to say care, but like I don't really, I can't really like keep track of his spending or his budgeting or like what his numbers are.

Speaker 5 Does that make sense?

Speaker 3 Yes. So talk with us about what exactly makes you uncomfortable when you're spending money or when you're thinking about engaging with it.

Speaker 3 And then how we can help you get through those feelings with the caveat that, you know, I'm not a therapist.

Speaker 5 Yeah, of course. And I will just mention that I have talked to my therapist about this before, but I do feel like there's got to be some.

Speaker 5 some way to kind of approach this more surface without making it a huge emotional weight. Yeah.

Speaker 5 The guilt is pretty big and the confusion, I think another question I wanted to bring to the table for you guys was when you have these opportunities for prioritizing, when you have your own cash flow, you know, like let's just say there's, there's no emotion attached to it.

Speaker 5 How do you prioritize one spending? over the other.

Speaker 7 I can empathize with feeling overwhelmed first of all, but I think it's really important to tackle the discomfort that you're feeling before you dive sometimes into trying to manage your finances.

Speaker 7 The exercise that I did years ago to try to understand better why I felt so uncomfortable with money is I did a lot of journaling around my money values.

Speaker 7 And as you said, it really sometimes is rooted in maybe how you saw your parents managing money and all these values that you picked up along the way, even just from watching TV shows or from anything really that you adopted.

Speaker 7 And one important thing that I did is separate and say which of these values are mine and which ones reflect who I am and my values as an adult versus ones that I got from other people.

Speaker 7 So that's something that helped me tremendously.

Speaker 3 As you're thinking about your money and what to do with it, Catherine, the hard part is that you can never take the emotional aspect out of it. So just understand that.

Speaker 3 But I really want to get deep into the specifics around your feelings. You've mentioned feeling guilt.
So when do you feel guilt? What specific actions or moments are triggering this feeling in you?

Speaker 5 I think it's probably a

Speaker 5 big spend, something like over $50

Speaker 5 in one purchase or something that felt kind of like,

Speaker 5 oh, I just want this and I don't know why. And I didn't, you know, a quick buy or something.

Speaker 5 Maybe a purchase from a place that doesn't align with my values, like a big box store or something like that.

Speaker 3 I'm I'm wondering if some of the source of this guilt is the disconnect between purchasing what you are getting and maybe not knowing whether you totally have the funds to cover it.

Speaker 3 It seems like you do have enough money coming in, but because you aren't as familiar with the actual numbers as you could be, there is perhaps a bit of uncertainty around, okay, how is this going to fit into a bigger financial picture?

Speaker 5 That sounds very plausible. Yeah.

Speaker 3 One thing I would encourage you to do when you feel guilty about a purchase purchase is ask yourself initially what you were actually hoping the purchase would do for you.

Speaker 3 Because sometimes we buy things as a coping mechanism. And the hard part about spending as a coping mechanism is that it is super easy to do, especially in the era of online shopping.

Speaker 3 It actually is effective because it makes you feel good.

Speaker 3 The hard part is that it's never really satisfying and you can feel worse afterward, like you're describing, like feeling guilty. Are you familiar with the concept of the hedonic treadmill?

Speaker 5 No.

Speaker 3 So it's this idea that we are all, everyone on this planet, on this treadmill of hedonism, if you will.

Speaker 3 So you can make a purchase or acquire something and it feels really good, but then you are quickly back at that baseline feeling of happiness that you have.

Speaker 3 So even though you got that spike of dopamine, it's never really going to last.

Speaker 3 Are there certain times of day or certain feelings that are more common that maybe lead you into purchasing have you been aware of any of those patterns probably stress uh which would make sense

Speaker 5 i don't know if i have diligently monitored what might be leading into it i do know the online thing happens late at night for sure yeah and that very common kind of yeah i think that's like i'm half asleep and you know a package shows your guard is down

Speaker 5 like what is this yeah the stress thing is real i think if i've had a long day and I could go to the gym or I could go to

Speaker 5 the shoe store, like, yeah, I'm going to probably go to the shoe store first.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 that feels sometimes

Speaker 5 bad instead of good, but also good, you know?

Speaker 7 I can absolutely relate. And I had an issue last year with emotional buying.

Speaker 7 I would buy when I was happy, when I was sad, when I was angry, every emotion, I needed to buy something, whether it was food or something else.

Speaker 7 But what really helped me was finding another coping mechanism or even just an outlet for when I am feeling happy, like, girl, you're happy, but you don't need to go buy something.

Speaker 7 I have adopted lots of hobbies now. So when I'm happy, I can go paint or I can go and ride my bike.

Speaker 7 And I have this nice little Bluetooth speaker and I play my music really loud while I'm riding my pink bike.

Speaker 7 So I think it's just about looking for things that can help with that emotion versus going to spending. I have a part of my budget that is allocated to me spending on things that I want.

Speaker 3 And that's why budgeting, a lot of people can think of it as restrictive or like almost patronizing in a way.

Speaker 3 But in fact, it can be a way to liberate your spending because you know that you have the intentionality and the purpose behind where you're allocating your dollars.

Speaker 3 At NerdWallet, we talk a lot about the 50-30-20 budget for good reason.

Speaker 3 50% goes of your income goes to cover your obligations, things like housing, any sort of medical expenses you might have, credit card debt, et cetera. And then 30% goes towards your want category.

Speaker 3 That is the more discretionary purchases, things like eating out. 20% goes towards additional debt payments and savings.
NerdWallet has a budgeting app where you can use this for free.

Speaker 3 Have you ever tried playing with a specific budget framework or an app? There are so many out there to play with.

Speaker 5 So what I have done before, which was probably as close as I've gotten to actually budgeting, was at the end of the month for about two years, every month I would just go through all of my finances and all of my expenses and I would just like write them down and it just gave me a sense of like okay I know where that went like I caught a few misspends and everything but it wasn't necessarily giving me rules so I'm still I'm sort of back to square one I think what's going to help you is to experiment a bit one really helpful thing that I've done in the past is for a single month, I tracked every single penny that came into or went out of my life.

Speaker 3 And I would track it in the moment. And I would also add on like what exactly it was I purchased and how I felt about that purchase.

Speaker 3 The idea is really just to understand exactly what you're doing and when and how you feel about it, because then you can sort of see patterns over time, mitigate some of those feelings of guilt and just create few opportunities for you to feel bad about how you're spending.

Speaker 5 Cool. I appreciate that.

Speaker 7 And also, Catherine, I want to know: do you have any fears or also uncomfortable feelings around learning more about money?

Speaker 7 So I know you said you are not very familiar and your husband does all of the things and you kind of just don't know.

Speaker 7 So do you feel overwhelmed in terms of even just digging into more information about budgeting systems or whatever other financial goals you have?

Speaker 5 I think that's a really astute question,

Speaker 5 observation, because I feel like there have been times when I've been able to sit down and spend an afternoon like those months where I was just like actually on the 31st or the 1st, I would be like, okay, I just got to do my summary thing.

Speaker 5 And I felt empowered and I was like, oh, I could do this. Actually, it doesn't seem so scary.
But stepping away from it, it just feels really

Speaker 5 huge and confusing and. overwhelming and like there's so many layers and aspects and it feels terrifying honestly Yeah.

Speaker 3 Part of that can come from the distance that you've created between yourself and your money.

Speaker 3 When I think if you downloaded some of your bank statements or you pull up your credit card app on your phone, you see where your money is going, having that familiarity really vanquishes some of the fear behind it.

Speaker 3 But there are some simple tactics that can help you do that too. Like maybe you want something that's more regular and smaller than that monthly

Speaker 3 review of your spending. Do you want a little prod from your reminders app on your phone every day?

Speaker 3 Is there a budgeting app that might have a push notification for you every day to say, hey, here's where your spending landed today?

Speaker 3 Just make it as easy as possible and try to distance your actions from senses of shame because you are just responding to your life one day at a time.

Speaker 3 You're trying to make the best that you can out of it.

Speaker 3 But also, I think getting really clear on those high level goals that you have might help you focus your spending too, because it's not just budgeting for the sake of budgeting it's budgeting so that you can use your money in the way that's most productive for you long term when you think about your money on a day-to-day basis how often are you connecting it to that longer term plan that you and your partner have made with your financial planner never very often see you shaking your head here yeah um

Speaker 5 well

Speaker 3 think about that because it's one of those things where every little action that you take makes it easier or harder to accomplish those goals.

Speaker 7 Sometimes people think that your relationship with money is this rigid straight line, and you always have to be doing the right thing, even when you know all the things to do.

Speaker 7 But just as with any relationship, it ebbs and flows, right? So I think remembering that can help with the shame. That's something to keep in mind as well.

Speaker 5 I don't really think in terms of goals or long-term picture very well.

Speaker 5 I'm kind of like more of an immediacy experiencer person. And

Speaker 5 so what you were saying, Sean, makes a lot of sense, but I don't really relate to it in terms of planning for the future.

Speaker 5 It's like when there's something shiny and beautiful in front of me, that feels like the most important thing in the world to me at that moment.

Speaker 5 And so I guess I'm just curious if you have any thoughts or opinions or ways of handling that kind of critical.

Speaker 5 moment where I'm standing there and I'm like overwhelmed with this sort of guilt and desire and,

Speaker 5 you know, vacuum that's like potentially could be filled with a lot of things.

Speaker 3 Yeah. The excitement of almost buying something is so great.
I think we all know that thrill.

Speaker 3 Something that walks me back from the edge is this mantra I've heard around the personal finance space, which is just that I have enough and I do. Try to redirect yourself.

Speaker 3 And it takes this sort of meta thinking as you are in the store or online to pull yourself back and consider, why am I feeling this emotion?

Speaker 3 How have I trained myself to get so hooked on the stopamine rush of buying something? And how can I redirect that energy? It is challenging and it's a muscle that you have to build over time.

Speaker 3 And you can also create more like physical tactile buffers like deleting all of your payment info from your apps on your phone and on your web browser.

Speaker 3 Maybe just carrying cash with you, make it less easy for you to buy things when you have that sudden impulse and it feels so good just to do it because then you know on the other side of that purchase are those feelings that are not so great.

Speaker 7 Apple Wallet, count your days. I have deleted all my cards from Apple Wallet actually, and it does work.

Speaker 5 Thank you. Those are great.
I think it was really helpful to get into that nice space of getting down to that really critical moment of the dopamine rush.

Speaker 5 And on the other side of that, I'm trying to go to grad school in the fall.

Speaker 5 I haven't been to school in about 20 years and I'm expecting it to be a pretty different experience than what I've been doing for the past 20 years.

Speaker 5 And so I'm anticipating that I'm going to have kind of a lot of adjusting to do. Do you guys have any suggestions or thoughts about ways to budget or handle money when you're under a lot of stress?

Speaker 5 Just long-term big picture.

Speaker 3 I think you should give yourself a little bit more credit as being a long-term thinker because going to grad school, planning to go to grad school, thinking about what your career might be after grad school, that's all long-term thinking.

Speaker 3 So even if you don't recognize that in yourself, you're doing it. So appreciate that.

Speaker 3 And ahead of going to grad school, you can use these summer months to try out a few different systems that work well for you.

Speaker 3 One that I rely on a lot is called paying yourself first, where when I have my paycheck come in, I have my direct deposit set up to go to a handful of different savings and checking accounts that I know I'm putting money in my emergency fund.

Speaker 3 I know I have it in my checking account to cover my mortgage and any other needs expenses, but I'm not managing it day to day in a way that's super hands-on.

Speaker 3 I did that administrative work in the front to make sure everything would just be going on its own. That might be something that could work for you.

Speaker 5 And also what's coming up for me is, like you said, if I use the summer months to get kind of get structured and get familiar, then actually maybe I could lean on my husband's structuring abilities to kind of help set up this planning and like front end work, let him know what I've found and then have him help me with that as well.

Speaker 3 Well, Catherine, thank you for being so open with us about your finances today and how you feel about it. Keep us posted on how everything goes for you.

Speaker 3 I'd love to hear about how your budgeting journey goes from here.

Speaker 5 Thank you both so much. I really appreciate being here.

Speaker 3 And that is all we have for this episode. Remember, listener, that we are here to answer your money questions.
So turn to the nerds and call or text us your questions at 901-730-6373.

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Speaker 3 This episode was produced by Tess Viglund, Hilary Georgie, helped with editing, Nick Karissimi, mixed her audio, and a big thank you to NerdWallet's editors for all their help.

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