Whether you use Amazon a ton, occasionally or rarely, it’s safe to say, most people have made a purchase through the massive site by now. It’s the world’s largest online retailer for a reason.
It’s just so easy, convenient and quick. And when you become a Prime member, the things you order arrive at your doorstep even faster. It’s like magic. How did we survive before Amazon?
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If you’re anything like me, I go through bouts of crutching on the site a little too hard. Items I would normally run to Target for, I’ll stick in my cart, or any time my cart goes past the $50 mark, I don’t think much more about it -- I just hit CHECK OUT and wait for my packages to arrive. It almost doesn’t feel like you’re spending real cash on Amazon. Could it be Monopoly money? (I wish!)
Pretty recently, my friends sent me a TikTok showing how to calculate your lifetime spend on Amazon. Here, I’ll include it below (just a warning that there is a swear word included, but it’s pretty minor).
@k.harrigan there must be a mistake........ #amazon
♬ Oh No - Kreepa
How did this woman spend $28,000?
(Actually, I shouldn’t ask that. One of my best friends was in that ballpark just in the past year).
Anyway, now that I have this information, I thought I should pass it along:
How to find out what you’ve spent
1. I think you can do this on your phone too, but for reference, I went through the process on my laptop. First things first: Click on Accounts & Lists (right under where it says, “Hello, Michelle!” in the upper right).
2. Now you should be on a page called Your Account. Scroll way down. Under “ordering and shopping preferences,” click “download order reports.”
3. Here’s your moment of truth. You have some options: Do you want to find out your lifetime total of Amazon spending? Or just see what you bought last month? How about last year? Fill in the dates you’re investigating, then click “request report.”
*When I ran my own lifetime report, I did have to check my Order History first, to see when I started buying things on Amazon (it was June 2012; a book called “The Secret Life of Pronouns” which is very on brand for me). And I ran the report right up until this week (my most recent order is yet again a book -- only this time, a Chrissy Teigen cookbook). I couldn’t find my total right away, until I played with the spreadsheet for a minute. But if you highlight the Item Total column, the program will tell you along the bottom your total sum (mine was about $5,300), along with your average (about $24). The most I’ve ever spent on one order was $325, and we’re talking about 222 orders total.
For what it’s worth, I thought this lifetime total was quite reasonable, especially considering my last year numbers alone were pretty startling.
Final thing: Your order report might take a while to download. I think it depends -- when I was gathering my 2020 total, Amazon told me they’d have to email me the report once it was ready. “That can’t be a good sign,” I thought to myself. But just this week, when I was accessing my all-time history, the report downloaded within a minute or so.
Are you brave enough to check your report? Once you do, please enlighten me by responding to this poll question:
It’s anonymous, btw, I won’t tell your mom or spouse! 🤣
There’s really no GREAT reason why you need this information -- I just thought it was an impressive tool we should all know about. And if you’re trying to get your spending under control (anyone else agree with me on the “Monopoly money” thing?), perhaps this will serve as a reality check.
Good luck out there!