Prime Day shoppers likely aren’t saving money

There’s always buzz around Amazon’s Prime Day, the sale extravaganza for Prime members, people who pay the company an annual or monthly fee to be specially treated with more ways to spend.

You may even plan your day around snatching a sale item or two — or three. And coming soon will be similar promotions from Target, Walmart and other retailers. But keep this in mind about any sale: You never save when you spend.

A sale is just a retailer’s ploy to get you to think you’re saving money on your purchase. The offer of a discount makes people emotionally irrational, says Jeff Kreisler, the co-author of “Dollars and Sense: How We Misthink Money and How to Spend Smarter.”

“Our unconscious decisionmaking biases lead us to make poor spending choices, whether through intentional traps set by retailers or by our own volition,” Kreisler says. “We get excited by the cool, fun, uniquely satisfying emotional rewards of something like Prime Day and lose sight of our goals and budgets.”

And yes, I know you love the free shipping. I’m not trying to get in your way of Prime membership privileges. I just need you to weigh the real costs.

“It’s always good to take advantage of opportunities to purchase goods and services at lower prices than usual,” says Ric Edelman, co-founder of Edelman Financial Engines. “But this assumes you were planning to make the purchase in the first place, and that the purchase is necessary and appropriate, given your personal finances and financial goals.”

The more you understand behavioral finance, the more money you’ll actually save and invest.

“If you pay $200 for clothing that usually costs $300, you’ll brag about saving $100 when in fact you spent $200,” Edelman points out. “Even supermarket coupons are a problem. No one who uses a save $1 off coupon actually saves a dollar.”