Amazon Prime Day starts very soon and every website on the internet, including this one, is going to be showing you all the things that are on sale at Amazon. Nobody does this because it's fun, but because trends show it's the content people like you want to see.
Some of the things you'll be reading about are cool and things you have been wanting to pick up. Hopefully, you can find the right deal on the right thing that fits your budget. Other things though, aren't what you've been looking for but have a price that makes you feel like you should buy it.
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A bit of advice: don't give in to your fear of missing out. It's a bigger problem than you think it is, and retailers like Amazon count on you doing it. That's why you will see so many "small-ticket" items like cables and chargers and cases sprinkled in among things like Chromebooks or phones.
Prime Day can be the right time to buy those small-ticket items if you take a minute to check out what you see before it ends up in your cart. This is especially important for something like a cable because it's usually from a brand you've never heard of and have no idea how good — or how bad — it will be.
That's where we can help because we don't recommend products that we don't like. Yes, so many "These are the best" articles can seem like spam and be in the way of something you wanted to read, but they are there to help. We've looked through what we are recommending in the lead-up to Prime Day and hopefully, we can help you spend your money wisely.
A normal person shouldn't have to buy 15 different USB cables to see what's best. Let people like us do it because we get paid to do it. Trust me, if we didn't we'd be just like you and buy one damn cable and call it a day instead of having cable spaghetti monsters living in our desk drawers.
We take this seriously because it's important to us and we think it can be equally important to you. When it comes to cables and chargers and wireless pucks and all sorts of other cheap things what you need is what works great and costs less.
Sometimes the deal you see isn't a very good deal, either. If Amazon says the price for Prime Day is lowered by a certain percentage, it is. But that doesn't mean that the price wasn't slowly raised in the month leading to Prime Day so the seller can claim you're saving money. That should be against the rules, but it's not and you can use services like Honey or Camelcamelcamel to see how often it happens. We check and when we see it, we'll tell you but never be afraid to check for yourself.
Don't be afraid to comparison shop and remember that every retailer, not just Amazon, will be having a huge sale for Prime Day. Walmart or Newegg may have exactly what you're looking for, maybe even a few dollars cheaper. Amazon doesn't like to admit it, but it isn't the only online retailer.
I'm not telling you that you shouldn't buy anything on Prime Day or that you shouldn't buy anything from Amazon. You can read about the company and decide for yourself. I'm just saying you need to remember how many times you bought something you didn't really need and it's just sitting in a drawer somewhere collecting dust, or even worse — ended up in a landfill once you realized you didn't really want it.
Times aren't great and the economy means most of us are on a budget of some sort. Don't blow it on a bunch of junk you don't need.
