I’m very proud of myself today because I just made decisions that will save me $100 per month. I called the cable and cell phone company and told them to:
- discontinue my cable TV bill
- reduce our family plan cell phone minutes
Before you leave this page thinking that this doesn’t apply to you because you make enough money to cover those things, let me tell you that my wife and I are not trying to save because we cannot afford these luxuries anymore. In fact, our living expenses are so low that we can live comfortably with just one of our income. We are doing this because we feel that it’s just not necessary to spend $100 on something we can do without.
You Did What?
We both agree that without cable TV, we can spend more time with each other on healthier activities. We can walk together in the park at night, we can play board games together and we can even spend more time cooking together (something I desperately need to learn from my wife!).
The decision to reduce my cell phone minutes is even easier. Between my wife and I, we just don’t talk on the phone all that much. During the last few months, we have saved up so many rollover minutes that we can comfortably go over our monthly limit without paying anything extra. Since we can always increase our minutes and decrease them at any time, we decided to reduce it first and see how our situation will go.
From This Point On
Since I’ve never really lived without TV before, I can guarantee that things will be perfectly normal. What I do know though is that cable TV is not exactly healthy for me. So with time, I will be better off without it. I plan to read more during my spare time, which I’m sure is much more enlightening than watching reruns of “Pretty Woman”.
What do you think of my decision? Have you ever done something out of the ordinary like cutting your cable TV before?
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{ 27 comments… read them below or add one }
I agree with canceling the cable. My girlfriend and I just recently canceled our cable because it was costing us $80 a month. We thought that money could be spent or even better saved elsewhere. We realized that most of the TV shows if we really want to watch them are online anyways, so not having cable isn’t a big deal. Eventually we were thinking of getting the Netflix black box thing, where you pay your monthly service charge, ours is $10, and you have instant access to over 10,000 titles including most popular TV show series. We would still be saving $70 if we used the Netflix black box.
The great thing about the internet age is that if you really need to watch your favorite shows, you can see pretty much all of them online.
Having said that, it is a great idea to reduce or eliminate your TV. That is something I need to work towards.
Nice job and thanks for sharing. I saved $300 by just shopping my car and home insurance policy. It takes a little time, not much, buy saving $300 every six months was worth it. Thanks for the post.
When I was single, I never had cable. I figured why pay for 500 infomercial channels and 2 good channels when a $15 antenna could get me 5 ok channels that between work and school I never got to watch anyway.
Now that I’m married, we have cable because my husband had it before we got married. However, we did compromise. I chose not to add the hispanic channels and he did away with his sports pack. The basic package comes with two Spanish Channels and ESPN and that’s enough for us.
I think canceling cable is a great idea! My roommate and I pay about $150/mo for FiOS cable + internet. He never uses the internet, and I hardly ever watch cable TV, so it just seems like we’re overpaying for both.
I can’t cancel cable… college football lives here!
But, I do wish we could…
I think it’s great that you got rid of cable. I’ve been toying with the idea of cancelling cable myself. It’s seriously not worth the monthly bill and certainly not good for your health.
Hmm nice, but like NDP i cant cancel cable tv, my favorite league lives there
and my internet connection pretty slow to do streaming T_T
I’ve been through all my bills recently and cut a few of them down further than what they were at before.
I can’t cut out my Cable TV since I don’t have any
I’ve been TV free for 18 years now
It’s not so much the cost, as it would be $30 with my internet/phone bundle, but it’s a matter of time. I just don’t have time to watch TV, nor to be bombarded by commercials.
I did want to watch one of the debates tho, so watched at a friend’s house, starting with the newscast first. I was astounded at the amount of commercials now on, and the personal/intimate level of the commercials. Not to mention all the political ads…. Boy, I can continue to do without TV – no problem!
I do patronize my library for audiobooks while doing things around the house in the evenings, or for an occasional movie on a rainy day/night.
and congrats on cutting the fat even tho you didn’t have to
Your retirement account will thank you!
My wife and I haven’t had cable tv since we’ve been married -and we’ve never missed it. Any TV shows that we watch we can catch on regular TV, watch online or stream to our Xbox 360 using a free streaming service like Tversity or PlayOn. Through PlayOn you can view current and past episodes of TV shows from a variety of different channels, as well as watching the movies and shows in your netflix queue.
Who needs cable?
I have lived without cable in the past and had no problems. However – I think that canceling cable services now would lead to a small uprising complete with pitchforks and torches to be rid of the evil cable canceling monster.
My family and I do not see quite evenly on this one but it keeps the peace and right now that is how I justify it.
I was able to slash down the cell phone bill substantially ($40 – $50 per month) though without any problems.
I’ve lived without cable for about 2 years now. The only thing that has changed has been my productivity. Less options to get wrapped up and waste 30 minutes of my day. Good for you. Welcome to maximum efficiency.
WOW…without cable TV is a huge huge step. Congrats on making that decision to a way better and healthier lifestyle
-Mike
Another thing is there are ways to cheat these expensive systems and hack it for free
I remember having the “BLACK CABLE BOX”, which gave free channels and pay-per-view. Then I had my friend hack my internet cable modem for $100 and I had about a year of internet for free. After that, my dad installed a DTV HDTC satellite and used a illegal cable card to watch movies. Now we just pay for cable internet and TV since it’s less hasle. However, there’s still ways to cheat the system. We rented an extra cable box for $10 and gave to my uncle that lives like 5 miles away. We registered the cable box first and he plugged it in without a problem. So basically we’re just paying $10 more and he gets a $70/month service for cheap
All these things to cheat the system is on the Internet. If you don’t condone cheating, that’s good for you, but since the big companies love to overcharge, my family loves to cheat it.
You are one brave person for cutting out cable entirely. I’m still working up the courage to do the same. I’m afraid my husband will go insane. Maybe we’ll have better luck when football season is over. Congrats on saving $100/month!
i think you made the right decision. but it’s really bold if you ask me. i can’t really imagine myself without cable tv and also a connection to the internet. but i guess those two things lessened my communication with my family. i barely talk to them and if i ever do, it wouldn’t take 5 minutes, which isnt good right? maybe someday something bad will come from lack of communication..
i really like this post. you reminded me that i need to spend time with my family too.
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I wish I could talk my wife into doing without cable. I really think we watch to much of the boob tube, and as you say, you will be spending more quality time together. Watching the latest episode of “Law and Order” really is not quality time.
We’ve gone a step farther, we’ve never had cable and we don’t miss it. Neither do we text or use the camera feature on the phones.
We save the boob-tube for when we’re tired, and watch only certain shows which helps us define our time limitations. (Although we do occasionally indulge in good PBS specials.) As a treat we’ll check out a movie from the library.
The computer is also a time-drain. I limit my non-productive time on the computer to an hour a day.
My family just canceled our cable tv as well. We replaced it with a netflix account in which we will be paying less then half the amount and will get more entertainment for the buck. No commercials, DVD movies and TV shows by the season. I’m loving it. I might even get one of the boxes that let your stream free shows & movies from netflix and or Amazon.com (Amazon charges a small fee)
Me too! Gave up cable TV in February 2008 and haven’t regretted it. It was costing me $50 per month. I only watched between 6-8 channels and when the cable company wouldn’t/couldn’t adjust my service to provide just those, I canceled.
Anything I really want to see can be found online, especially news coverage such as President Obama’s inauguration yesterday. I won’t scrimp on my internet though! But that only costs me $50…so it is still a $50 saving per month. Right to ING it goes.
Feels sooooooooooooooooo good!
My power went out the other day. I could not believe how many activies I have that include utilities. It made me realize how nice it is to just do stuff that does not require a television, wii, movies, music etc. Taking a walk and playing with the dog. Free stuff that is relaxing.
When I joined the military I lived in the barracks on base for the first 2 years. There was no cable TV in the rooms so I just got used to not having it. If you have the internet you don’t really need TV anyway.
I just read a recent article that says the average American family has 118 channels but watches a mere 14 of them.
There are so many digital channels available over the air, I’m shocked that anyone pays for them at all.
If you have a house with an attic, a basic attic-mounted antenna will be feeding 10-20 HD channels into your TV for nothing, depending on how close you are to a city, and how well you aim it.
I bet that most of the shows people actually watch regularly are on one of the broadcasted stations in their area, and they’ll only ever have to miss out on a few specialty shows.
Plug your address or lat/long into a site like TV Fool and you’ll get a complete listing of free OTA stations that you should be able to get (some are subject to interference by buildings). Use their radar map to aim your antenna for the ones you want. (the address search is US only, outside the US you’ll need to go to Google Maps and get your coordinates in decimal format)
I respect your decision. Having some entertainment is a must in our lives. If we go out excessively that gets expensive. Cable is still a great value in my mind compared to other things we could be doing. But I applaud you.