I recently made the decision to cut the cable cord in our household and convert all of our televisions over to internet and over-the-air programming. By dropping cable television and our cable based phone service (all four of us have cellular phones) I’ll be saving about $135 a month. I spent about $300 on equipment needed to facilitate this transition, which I figure I will make up in about 4 months of not having to pay the monthly bill (I will still be paying $20 a month for Netflix and Hulu Plus).
What’s surprised me the most about all of this is how much anxiety the decision has caused me.
It’s interesting, isn’t it? I’ve had cable television since I was very, very young. We were one of the first families on our block to have cable, and it has never been an option NOT to have cable in a household I lived in. I’ve lived with having cable so long that I’ve gotten to the point where I feel like it’s something I “have” to have as opposed to something I “want” to have.
Isn’t that strange?
I’ve actually found myself wondering if I’m doing the “right thing.” Yes, those exact words went through my head. The “right thing.” Like it could possibly be some kind of monumental mistake to cancel our cable television and phone service.
I wonder if it’s not one of many signs of how hard we’re pushed to consider these kind of things necessities by “the man.”
In any case, the transition continues apace. I have one more television left to hook up the antenna to and after that we’re pretty much done with cable. I’ll just need to return the equipment. We will undoubtedly miss having access to Bay News 9, but I can no longer justify spending that kind of money for 10 minutes of news every night. Besides, I’ve already found a 24 hours weather broadcast channel from one of the local stations.
I still have cable phone service, because I don’t own a cell phone (I work from home, I only need one or the other) but I haven’t had cable for about a year now.
Can’t say as I miss it much…
I have noticed more frequent calls from my cable internet company trying to win me back to cable TV and / or cable phone service with them (as opposed to Vonage.) The prices keep dropping. And they’re training their phone people to speak in one long runon sentence until they get to the end where they say, “…and for you to get this service I just need to verify your account information.” I wonder how many people verify the account information instead of saying, “I don’t want the service”? (Same method that car dealerships use: get people to answer “yes” to a bunch of questions, then throw out a question about certain options or add-ons or pricing.)
Congratulations on getting unplugged.
There are so many other options for entertainment, and you will subject yourself to far less advertising.
I was only spending about 75 bucks a month, and I cut it off because I desperately needed the flow to help with my debt elimination. When I turned it back on 6 mos later–same episodes of things were being shown on repeat. That settled it for me.