Cut Cable and Save $900 (or more!) a Year!

We cut our cable in December 2010 and haven’t looked back! At $75/month, do you know how much we’ve saved per year? $900! Multiply that by 4 years and that’s $3600!

(For the record, our Disney Cruise + travel expenses in January 2014 cost $2500. Our cable savings paid for our Disney Cruise! What kind of vacation could YOU take if you cut cable and put the money in savings???)

We don’t miss cable at all. In fact, if I think about it too much, I get MAD at myself for wasting all that money all those years we DID have it!!

I love that Bug can watch TV without being bombarded with commercials for the hottest new toy or gadget or “must-have”. He hasn’t been exposed to the “consumerism” that makes 6 year olds put iPads and iPods in their letters to Santa and makes last years Nintendo DS he got for Christmas no longer worthy and in need of replacement by the newest 3DS or whatever. When it comes to asking for presents for birthdays or Christmas, Bug has a hard time making a list! This past year he wrote his letter to Santa asking for 3 things (our limit on Santa gifts) and after that, didn’t know what else to ask for from us and grandparents! I’m just glad that we have a “filter” on what comes in to our home by eliminating cable from our lives. That’s one of the upsides to not having cable. (Besides the savings!)

Here’s how we live without paying for television service:

DVDs

Our library is a great resource for borrowing DVDs for FREE! They have movies as well as popular kid’s shows on DVD.
Redbox is always releasing FREE rental codes! Click here to find any codes going on now.

Networks Websites

ABC, Fox, CBS, and NBC all have their primetime shows on their websites!

Netflix

For $7.99 a month we have access to hundreds (maybe even thousands) of movies and TV shows. We can stream movies and shows instantly through the Wii or computer.

HULU Plus

For $7.99 a month we have access to all the shows on the major networks as well as our favorite shows on networks like A&E and USA. Plus hundreds of shows that are off the air that we can catch up on! We can stream these shows through the computer and Xbox
There is also a Kids channel on Hulu that Bug watches through the Wii.

So what about those things you need TV for, like news or weather reports?

News – is readily available online. I can even still watch my favorite news show, The O’Reilly Factor on the Fox News site. I follow Fox News on Facebook so I get news updates. Plus, I listen to a lot of talk radio. I get the Sunday and Wednesday newspapers as well as a free local paper on Thursday so I know what’s going on locally also.

Weather – Every smartphone now comes with a weather app – with hourly updates. I also follow our local weatherman on Facebook. He posts updates – especially on anything important coming through (storm systems, bitter cold, etc.) You can also look up your local weather online.

So just because we don’t have cable – we haven’t completely cut ourselves off from civilization. It is possible to live without TV. And even with all the other ways to watch TV, now that we don’t have satellite service we watch a lot less TV. It’s not on just for background noise anymore which is peaceful and I don’t get sucked in to watching a Saturday afternoon marathon of a bad reality series when I should be doing something else.

I’d love to hear from you! Have you taken the plunge and cut cable or satellite?