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I was rid of cable TV for almost 2 years and frankly I loved it. We are so trained to coming home and flipping the darn thing on and sitting down in front of it for the rest of the evening. Besides that most of what is aired is pure garbage. I got so much done without it. I watched two or three shows on the Internet and one can always go to a sight like fancast to watch other shows. However, I recently moved and when I called to change my service, they talked me into free basic cable for 6 months. I find I still don't turn the thing on, except to watch Frasier reruns at night.
If you're spending too much on pay television, consider firing your monopoly cable or satellite provider and joining the 1% of Americans who watch all of their TV on Internet connections.
So what do you do after you get rid of cable or satellite? Here are some alternatives:
YouTube has launched feature-length programming, plus there's always Joost and Hulu. An estimated 20% of cable programming is now available through the computer.
Firing your cable or satellite provider can save you more than $1,000 annually.
Two friends of mine DITCHED cable television and they'll never go back.
Don't go cold turkey, but see if you can ease your way into it. Also, the lowest level membership in Netflix allows you to get the Roku box and have a huge library of content on-demand.
I've never had cable TV. Never had it...never wanted it.
I switched to the lowest package as I watch occasionally. Thanks to this post though I have found several of the sites mentioned and watch Burn Notice and found quite a few other shows I can watch as well. Going to try to stick to internet and not watch TV and see if I can cancel in 3 months.
I moved to Weston, FL last year and this city has some weird ordinance. All the residents must subscribe to a local cable TV company till 2013. The cable bill is included in the water bill. It's insane and I'm sure there's some class action suit going on.
Before this move, I didn't have cable and just watched network TV. Now I started to watch CNBC, CNN and occasionally ESPN.
I pay $57 for cable TV, but it ends up $72 with taxes, fees, blah blah blah. You know the routine.
I would desperately love to get rid of it. I watch the local news for about 20 min each day; I watch MSNBC in the evening (Olbermann, Maddow); I watch Major League Baseball and the NFL. So I could get by with probably five channels. Instead, I pay for at least 70 that I'll never watch.
I thought I heard that the FCC would move to a la carte pricing, but that idea seems to have been forgotten.
Back in WA, we had Comcast, which started out cheap enough - 30.00-something for the basic package - but within 2 years all the sign-up specials were used up and that 30-something reached 70-something. Then we moved to a trailer park where the space rent included Comcast again, as a pass-through with a local provider. No choice as to package, and the only alternative was to get a dish, but there weren't any dish satellites in range. DH was a TV junky, and I liked some programs, but mostly it was background noise. The one good thing about Comcast was that their menu was clear, large, and easy for me to read, since I'm legally blind. After DH died and I moved, I signed up for DirecTV, and it's a disaster. I wanted only CNN, CNBC, FOX news, several of the Discovery channels line up, and I never could find them. They don't have a program listing in print, on line, or on the set that I can read. I finally decided to have it cut off entirely, and I was told 'It will cost you X dollars to break your contract early.' I said 'What contract? I didn't sign a contract.' They said 'Yes you did, you got an implied contract with free installation.' Well, no one had thought to mention that to me! So I had it cut back to the absolute basic, which is primarily cartoons, and I'll have to pay until the day my contract expires, because it's far cheaper to pay the monthly fee than it would be to buy it off. Then they are history. No way am I going to pay their price not to be able to see what I want. It's cheaper to use Netflix or just buy a dvd for something like the Westminster dog show. But I have no idea what I'm going to do with 2 large color TVs - I only need one for the cassette/dvd player, and I've already given away another one.
I could save a huge amount of money every year by ditching some things.
Cable TV: Currently I have "digital" cable with DVR. This service alone is $80/mo.
High Speed Internet: $30/mo
Phone: $25/mo
Tax on all of the above: $20/mo
We have all those services bundled together and the total bill is about $150/mo.
We could get a basic (VERY BASIC) cable package for about $20/mo.
We don't need the land line because we have cell phones.
Internet is kind of a sticky subject though. I mean it's getting to the point where we have to have it. And a modem connection is just so slow that it's not really even worth it at that point. We could shop around and maybe get a lower rate....possibly $20/mo?...thereby saving $120/yr.
So we could go from a $150+/mo ($1800/yr) to $40 ($480/yr). But we'd be hosed when it came to seeing things on Cable that we like to watch and DVR (Which I'm convinced is a gift from god....j/k). It's all about what you're willing to sacrifice.
Cell Phone: We have 3 lines. One for me, One for my wife, and One for our oldest daughter. The longer she has it the more I'm convinced that our daughter's phone is pointless....It's never charged, she leaves it at home, she breaks them, leaves them in her jeans pocket and they get washed, friend buries them in the snow (happened last week btw), etc. It's a drain on my bank account and a constant headache. We have an assurance plan that allows us to replace a phone for a minimal cost....but I'm sure by now I've paid enough into it to have bought a phone on my own anyway. We also have an unlimited texting plan. Ka-Ching, Ka-Ching, Ka-Ching.....My monthly cell bill is $145....and that's if nobody goes over on their minutes...and we typically don't go over because they know I will have to come home and shoot them.
If we killed the texting plan that takes off $30....but it also means if we have to text we get charged out the yin yang. Canceled the assurance plan...$5/per phone...$15/mo. Canceled Daughter's line....$15. That takes it down to $85/mo. (ie $720/yr saved)
Theoretically I do not need a cell phone. I got by without one until about 5 years ago. But the thing is my butt has been saved on several occasions because I had it....where before it wouldn't have been saved and I'd just have to deal with the consequences of whatever the situation dealt me. If that meant being stuck in the middle of nowhere with a flat tire on my bike that's what it meant.
I didn't own a tv for most of my 20's. I was real self righteous about it, too. Of course, I was in my 20's, single, built like a brick house (which made it a snap to get dates--that was a lot of my entertainment in those days), and I lived in southern California. It was easy to find other inexpensive things to do in L.A. and always easy to find groups of young people to hang out with.
Now I'm older, and it's not so easy anymore to find people who want to hang out on a street corner with me. Plus... I like hanging out with my spouse and kids. I've come to appreciate tv. I can entertain the whole family for the price of a bag of popcorn and the cheapest cable bill. We get our movies from the library, but we love watching the History channel and Animal Planet. We have a few other shows we like, and we like sports and news. We followed the olympics this summer, watched the presidential debates. Could I watch these things on the internet? Yes, but it's not the same. I don't enjoy getting the family together to sit around the computer and watch a show. And the server tends to jam at the worst moments.
By the way, the person who thinks he's saving money by watching tv at a bar should take a second look at his bar tab! Bars charge plenty for those drinks, you know. Buy a six pack, cook your own pizza rolls, and you'll see watching tv at home is cheaper than a bar.
My senior year in college I didn't have cable in my apartment. It's amazing how when you go without it for a period of time you just get used to it. I mean I didn't even have a high speed internet connection either....modem. Streaming vids? Yeah right! I didn't get cable because the ONLY option available to me was that I had to get the plan that had like 50 channels and had to pay a deposit and all that. I didn't want to mess with it because I was only going to be there for a school year.
So I was pretty much relegated to sitting around doing coursework and for recreation I just rode my bike. The result was I was in great shape and made good grades. LOL
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I didn't get cable because the ONLY option available to me was that I had to get the plan that had like 50 channels and had to pay a deposit and all that. I didn't want to mess with it because I was only going to be there for a school year.
