One thing is certain: Most of us shop at Walmart or Amazon at least once a month or (a lot) more. One is pretty convenient to get to and one is just a few clicks away on your phone. Which one you drive to or click on is becoming more important to your wallet. Because, if you don’t comparison shop, it’s going to empty your wallet rather quickly.

From its inception, the goal of Amazon was to dominate the market with low prices. But that ended, or rather it transitioned, to convenience quite some time ago. With a reported 100 million plus people having Amazon Prime, there is an entire generation that values the convenience of two clicks to buy and guaranteed next day delivery. Amazon is banking on the fact that those prime customers don’t shop around much – and they’re right.

Convenience trumps price – just like the closest ATM with a four dollar “service” charge trumps free withdrawals at our own bank three blocks down the street. As we’ve talked about more than three years ago, Amazon isn’t the least expensive on identical products almost half the time (according to studies originally reported by US consumer guru Clark Howard.

Walmart also has some weird pricing on their website. Most of it appears to be from third-party vendors (which is also the vast majority of Amazon’s inventory. Here are some of my shopping attempts and price comparisons from the last two weeks:

The legal rip-offs for those not bargain shopping works the other way around, too. This is a simple 10 pack of plastic cover plates for light switches: $15 from Amazon vs. $64 from Walmart for a 12-pack!

A gray bus pan that restaurants use to clear tables: I needed two of them since they’re great for the garage. But I almost had a heart attack seeing the Walmart price of $200…for something I bought at Costo Business Centre for $6.

There were a few more of my purchases – or purchase attempts – from the last few weeks where either Amazon or Walmart weren’t even close. While these may be obvious, it’s the 20 smaller things you buy where the prices are “only” out 10 to 20 percent that don’t make it onto our “better double check that price” radar. And that’s what both of these giants, and their third-party vendors count on. At a time when it seems like everything is already up in price by at least 10-20 percent, take the two minutes to compare prices. Your wallet will thank you!