Cutting the (Cable) Cord

By Sara

I am going to admit something terrible to you all. It's hard to type these words. I feel a little nervous putting this out there. Ok, here goes: we canceled cable. We Cut The Cord. We ARE cord cutters. Whew. I feel better just saying it outloud. Look, I know people have lived without cable for YEARS, decades, even. For us, this was a really hard decision to make and it wasn't until we were driving on the highway one afternoon and simultaneously saw the billboard for the Roku box that my husband and I decided it was time. We had considered it for a while but hadn't made the big move...cutting off cable. We did it and we haven't looked back.

Once upon a time we were hardened people, the kind of people who lived and died by their DVR and it's (limited) storage capacity. We loved flipping the TV on and using it as background noise. Fast forward a few years and a few kids and we knew it was time to make over our viewing habits. Our older child was way too obsessed with Disney Junior and we were tired of the constant noise and siren call of the cable box. So we researched our options and realized we could watch most of what we wanted online through Hulu Plus, Netflix or Amazon. We promptly called up our cable provider, cancelled our service, and bought a little itty bitty Roku box (we already had a PS3 which is also able to stream video).

You guys, it has been awesome. For one, we're discovering shows we never would have if we only had cable (Friday Night Lights, anyone?). We're being more judicious with what we watch and what we purchase to watch. For example, I am obsessed with The Good Wife and wanted to watch the past seasons. Unfortunately CBS is a tightwad network and doesn't allow much free streaming. So I made the conscious decision to purchase the whole season from Amazon for $35. I rationalized that purchase because I was paying for something I would actually WATCH versus paying a large monthly cable bill for MANY MANY MANY shows I would never watch. 

Netflix has it's own separate kids section with tons of great programming and we love Hulu Plus for our usual comedies and dramas. We don't mind paying a monthly membership fee because we save so much in the long run. Our past monthly cable bill hovered around $120 whereas now our monthly bill is around $57 and that's only if I buy a full season of a show a month. So far I've only bought one season and we're already three months into going cable-free. That's HALF what we were paying before. 

Now, this might not work for you if you or your significant other is a big sports fan and needs the NFL/MLB/NHL/ABCDEFG networks. Luckily for me my husband isn't a huge sports guy and can happily catch the best plays of the game the next day online. One way around this is to buy a cheap antenna that grabs your local HD channels and you can view anything that's being broadcast on those channels. The antennas are super tiny and unobtrusive now.

We're really happy with our decision to "cut the cord" and free ourselves from the cable monster. The extra money in our pocket every month is pretty great, too. Have you cut the cord or are you contemplating it?

(all images from Google Images)

Comments

[Dawn K.]

Gah. We are SO ready to cut cable at our house, but we are sports people. Namely, MLB, college basketball (give me Jayhawks or give me death!), college football, and the occasional NFL game. Anyone have suggestions?

[Jesabes]

We also don't have cable and I think it's awesome. We have a fancy antenna, Amazon Prime (instead of Netflix), Hulu Plus, and recently set up a homemade DVR to record shows from the antenna. My husband does miss sports a lot, though.

[Em]

We went over a year with cable. We only had Netflix and we watched a lot of shows (including some we wouldn't have otherwise). We missed watching games during football season though. We just recently got cable again and I'm not super excited about it yet but come football season I'll be glad I have it.

[Mary]

I never had cable in the first place. I grew up without it, so have never even considered paying for tv at any point in my adult life. I have an antenna, which picks up all the local stations (I think there are 10), and a Roku to stream Netflix. I supplement those things with free dvds from the library and pretty much all my bases are covered.

[Erica]

I'm hearing impaired and had a really awful experience with net flix. The don’t offered closed caption through streaming. They showed no sympathy and said it was not something they plan on investing in. I'm not sure about the others but it really turned me off. I cannot watch TV or movies without it.

[Erin]

We just did this! Two months in and we do not miss cable AT ALL.

[katie]

Ugh, I would ABSOLUTELY drop cable in a HOT SECOND but for the sports. Always the sports. We will have cable forever more, because of John's love for sports.

[Janet]

I haven't had cable in over a decade. We do have Netflix, so we see some stuff, albeit way after it originally aired. My husband watches MLB games through an MLB subscription.

[Kitty Murray]

We did the same as you, although, we hardly watched cable to begin with so we just had the most basic package anyway. Now, with our Roku, we have Netflix and Amazon Prime (we got rid of Hulu Plus because we weren't using it). We also have a nice antenna. We are saving a little bit, although, not as much as most people would because we didn't upgrade our cable to the better, more expensive packages. Also, we don't watch any sports in our house (except for the Olympics and World Cup).

[Kate]

Our current contract expires at the end of September and we're probably going to cancel then (or possible after the fall season of Dexter is over). We still have to run the numbers and see if it's worth it after the internet cost goes up by not bundling.

[Victoria]

We cut the cord completely -- no cable, no antennae, no Netflix. We get movies from the library when we want to watch something. I was so tired of my family "worshipping" the screen, which got more attention than any person in our home. It has been so awesome to unplug, and it's amazing to watch the kids fill their time with actual PLAY, inside and out.

[auntie]

So, um...am I the only person that could use a quick lesson on how all these things work together? (I'd never even heard of Roku until this post.) I had DirecTV installed a few months ago and still haven't hooked up my DVD player because I can't figure it out :( In my defense, cable was previously included in my rent at other apartments so I never had to worry about it.

Does anyone have a good resource they could share to give me some learnin' about all these options? Or should I just find myself a tech-geek boyfriend??

[A'Dell]

I am writing a giant post about this RIGHT NOW for my blog and I love not having cable. We have been without since 2005 and it's great for all of the reasons you have outlined.

On the sports, XBox has a new deal with EXPN where you can watch the suite of ESPN channels streaming, via XBox, live, for a $50/year subscription. We haven't tried this much yet, but come football season we will. We also get a lot of the sports we want to watch via local network.