Thought Provoking Thursday
Thought Provoking Thursday
Thought Provoking Thursday's goal it to offer a new-ish perspective to saving on necessary items aside from our grocery and household needs. Each week I will bring an idea to the table to share how I personally tackle areas of my own family's spending. I am hopeful that my faithful readers will feel the freedom to offer more advice through comments below each post.
It has been nearly a year since our family cancelled cable.
About a year a go my husband lost his job, and so we immediately began trimming the non-essentials out of our spending. One of our first items to trim was our cable TV. Our Internet and cable (plus DVR rental) bill was about $110/month. Cable, which seems like such an American 'standard' was actually very easy to forgo- especially at $60/month! (We did keep our Internet connection since my husband is a computer programmer and I'm addicted to blogging!)
Since we had relied almost exclusively on our DVR for watching our favorite shows, we easily exchanged cable for a $9 monthly subscription to Netflix.
Netflix is actually pretty amazing! In exchange for our $9/month membership, we are able to enjoy 1 DVD out at a time, PLUS we have access to 90% of our favorite shows instantly available online AND many (if not all) of Netflix's movies are now available online instantly!
My husband purchased a $40-ish device which allows our XBox 360 to connect *wirelessly* to our Internet, making our Netflix membership as similar to us as our DVR had been!
We also have an older computer accessible to our TV for our shows that are not available through Netflix but on Hulu.com. Anytime we want to watch a show or a movie, we have instant access right through our remote and TV!
We are happily spending $9/month for MORE (movies) than we were receiving through cable at $60/month.
6 comments:
We did the same thing a few months ago!!! Love it!
We use Netfilx this way, too, and love it. There are lots of kids' shows for our daughter and if we actually find time to watch a movie, it is right there!
We do something similar, essentially by attaching a CPU and server to our TV and using a program called Windows Media Center. Cable-free since May, and we haven't missed it once!
Awesome to have such great feedback! Thanks!!!
I hope that your internet bill is not $50 (110-60 for cable = 50 for internet)! Charter Internet just moved my internet price up from $29.99 (a 6 month introductory amount) to $59.99. I called to ask for a lower rate and they have a new thing going on right now. You simply agree to stay with them for a certain amount of time (I think a year?) and they will keep the rate at $29.99/month. It is okay to move as long as you take the internet service with you (provided that you are still within their service area, otherwise there is no cancellation fee). And, even if you hit hard times and have to cancel the service, the cancellation fee is only two months worth of service, $60. I think that's a pretty good deal!
We have very few options in our area, and Internet only is a steep price. The good news is that we are able to write off our Internet service since my husband is self employed and works from home.
Thanks for the scoop!
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