Price Inflation: My Family’s Amazon Story

[Part 1: Costco – Part 2: Amazon]

The “big news” in the 2021-2024 time period was inflation and the cost of products, foods, and household items. Most of the inflation occurred soon after the Covid pandemic was under control. The rise in prices was due to high demand and limited supply because of labor shortages and supply chain issues in the harbors, etc.

We moved to South Reno in late 2021 from Honolulu. Establishing a new household requires many purchases, several of which from Internet retail giant Amazon. Actually, Amazon has a large warehouse in the Reno-Sparks area. Unlike the 4+ days it took even for small shipments to arrive at our place in Honolulu, several of our orders in Reno arrive within 18 to 36 hours!

I looked at my orders in summer 2021 and then re-priced the same exact items in summer 2024. (This is why my table is not very long. Some items have been superseded by newer models.) The table below presents a sample of 21 items; click on it to see a clear version. As expected, prices have changed. Out of my 21 listed items, nine had higher prices (shown in red), eight had pretty much the same price (black), and four were cheaper (blue) in 2024!

If we had to re-purchase one of each of these 21 items in 2024, we would spend only $61 more than we paid in 2021, $1322 instead of $1261. So… our Amazon inflation over three (3) years is 4.9%, or only 1.8% per year! This is a similar result with our sample of 24 Costco items, that I posted about a few days ago.