Ten years, you guys.
TEN years.
For ten years, whenever Andy would ask “What do you want for your birthday/anniversary/Christmas?” my answer was always the same:
Throw away the TV.
And I was dead serious.
I hate TV. Truly. I didn’t have one through most of college, and even when I did finally get a bitty 19″, I never hooked up cable and it didn’t get flipped on for weeks at a time.
It’s just…boring. I mean, sure, Jersey Shore can offer up some mindless entertainment (are you judging?), and a girl can live vicariously through a few episodes of Say Yes to the Dress…but really, I’m not a fan overall. It’s not a judgy self-righteous thing…just simply something I genuinely don’t enjoy. Like mountain climbing. Or yoga in a 200 degree room. Or cleaning toilets.
Plus, the noise…oh the constant buzzing noise!!! Gives me anxiety. Anxiety!
Ironically, with a house of almost four kids, I like quiet. And even if I can’t get “quiet”, I’ll take “nothing but the sounds of kids”. So, yeah…I don’t listen to Pandora or CDs or have books on tape playing either. It’s just me, the kids, and whatever noise we are making…good and bad. (And let me be clear: my house is not quiet. Not even close. It is loud. We all have big voices and I’m not sure my kids have any concept of the theory of the Inside Voice. So please don’t picture some sweet serene sanctuary, because you will be duly disappointed the second you walk through my door.)
Now. Let me tell you how RIDICULOUSLY OPPOSITE my husband and I are.
He needs noise. Sound. At all times. Constant. In fact, the first year we were married, we were both in our last year of college…and many of our first arguments came when we were trying to study. He needed music or TV in the background to concentrate, and I…needed quiet. If he “won”, I didn’t get a lick done. If I “won”, he couldn’t string together a thought. In fact, to this day, as an aerospace engineer, doing complicated math all day long, he sits with a pair of Bose headphones
When he got home: the TV was flipped on immediately…and then he would leave the room. Weekends: he would watch TV in the morning and then go out to the garage, and I’d finally turn it off HOURS later, because you know, everyone was outside anyway, and it was like an emergency button would go off in his brain (Submarine Down! We’ve been hit!) and he’d be like “Hey! I was watching that!”
What? No you were not! You were in the garage. With the radio on. And you have been. For the last three hours. How on EARTH were you watching that?! Do you have x-ray vision I need to know about?
But you see, it’s kinda not his fault. It’s his mom’s. Well, not even that. I’m not throwing her under the bus. Because when she told me this, I thought….”aaaaaahhhhh. Okay, I get it. I still hate it, but I totally get it.”
She was a single mom for most of her boys’ young life. She lived in a mountain town. Alone, with two little boys. She needed noise. Because the house was too quiet without it. Every bump and thump and crick made her jump. So she drowned it out by having sound. Now it makes sense, right?
But still.
And then it was paying the danged cable bill every month. Look, I don’t much like paying any of the bills to be honest, but the cable bill?! Ohmyword. Each and every month I audibly groaned and died a little bit inside. We pay HOW MUCH each and every month for mediocore programming to be streamed through our television???? You know what I can DO with that much money every month???? Dude.
Andy’s biggest obstacle to ever giving into my TV-less demands all boiled down to one word: SPORTS. Beyond that, he didn’t mind the idea of cutting cable since there are now plenty of other ways to get content.
You see, even though you can subscribe to Netflix and Hulu and get free stuff on the web…you can’t stream sports. And my boy is a sports guy. His first love is basketball. If I loved him at all, how could I possibly ask him to not watch his beloved Lakers play? How could I possibly separate the bond of he and Kobe? And March Madness??? What then?! He could feel his blood pressure dropping and his heart rate slowing. He almost flat lined thinking about it.
So, for ten years, the ever present squeak, squeak, squeak of sneakers on hardwood wafted through my house. Chants of “Defense! Defense! Defense!” and “Aiiiiiiirrrrrballllllll!” floated up in to the rafters.
And I paid the cotton pickin’ cable bill through clenched teeth.
And you know that cable bill just mysteriously kept going up and up and up…every month. New surcharges and taxes and magical fees just kept making that number creep higher and higher.
Finally, one day, I really looked at the bill. It was now over $150. A month. I saw that the internet portion was $60 and the TV part was $90…plus another almost $10 for taxes and whatevers. Now, internet is a must. No, no, not just for blogging and Pinterest…but with a husband who is self-employed, he needs to have access to his email and work stuffs, and he most often skips working late at the office to be home for dinner every night…and then does some work late when the rest of us are asleep anyway (he’s a nightowl). My point being that we can’t cut internet. That $60 is non-negotiable.
But we pay $90 a month for no other real reason than to watch some Laker games???? Okay, really. That’s A LOT of money for one very specific reason. So I went to him and said: “Do you realize we spend almost $100 per month so that you can watch basketball? I mean, that’s $1,200 a year. For a handful of games. Is it really, truly worth that much to you? If we lived closer, you could almost buy season tickets for that much! 100 bucks. Every month. Month in. Month out. For ONE thing.”
“Let me think about it. That is a lot.”
When Andy says he’ll think about something, it’s really code for “Let me buy a few months’ time.” Don’t get me wrong, he thinks about it…leisurely. It’s like he goes all Southern on me and wants to sit on the front porch rocker sipping sweet tea while he thinks about it.
Finally, one day a couple of months ago, after paying almost $160 to Comcast (it had gone up…again!), I texted him: “I’m doing it. I’m cancelling cable. 100% for reals. Not kidding. Emotionally prepare yourself.”
I called Comcast. I got a guy on the other end. “I’d like to cancel cable. Not all of our services. Just cable.”
At first he went through the usual song and dance of “can I offer you a bundle package?” and when he finally realized I was serious, he was…shocked. The following ensued:
“Um, m’am? Does your husband know you’re doing this?”
“Kinda. Not really. I mean, I texted him about it, but I don’t think he thinks I was serious.”
“Wait. Are you serious? You’re cancelling cable and your husband isn’t even on board with it?”
“Yup.”
“What’s he gonna say when he gets home?”
“I don’t know. But I’m sick of paying for it. He’ll be okay.”
“Wow. If my wife did that, I’d be SO mad. SO mad. Are you sure you want to cancel? I mean, maybe you guys can work something out?” (It was like I had just announced my impending divorce or something!)
“Um, no. It’s okay. He won’t be happy, but this isn’t life or death. It’s just TV.”
“But what are you going to do now???!!! In the evenings, after dinner, on the weekends????!!!”
“Well, we’ll get Netflix so we’ll have that. But I don’t know…hang out. It’ll be a paradigm shift for our family, but we won’t die you know.”
Laughing. “Man, you’re brave. Should I send a cop car over to sit outside your house for when your husband gets home?”
“You’re cute, but no. You know, people are starving to death in other countries. This isn’t a life necessity.”
“It is in America.”
How true, right? It was funny though. This random guy at Comcast was for real, genuinely concerned for Andy’s new lifestyle. He was appalled. He was confused. He was shocked. I appreciate his concern. It really was kinda cute. One dude looking out for another dude. He did eventually convince me to keep basic, local cable for $7/month. With the most basic of channels (NBC, ABC, etc.) Andy can watch Laker away games (home games are on ESPN so he can’t see those) and this summer, we’ll be able to catch the Olympics. (Which I do love and I think it’s good for the kids to watch too.)
Keep in mind, we’re not Amish. We got a subscription to the instant streaming of Netflix through our blu-ray player ($8/month) and we kept the local cable ($7/month). But that’s $100 vs. $15 a month. It makes my heart happy.
So far, it’s been a couple of months. Andy vascillates between feeling like he’s slowly dying inside (it probably didn’t help that I cut cable right before March Madness and in the middle of basketball season)…and begrudingly admitting it’s kind of nice. More than once he’s told me that “you know, the whole no cable thing is kinda nice…we spend a lot more time playing with the kids and just hanging out outside and stuff. I like the family time.” And then another day he’ll say “Do you have any idea how bad it is that I can’t watch basketball? During MARCH MADNESS???!!! This really sucks Jeannett. It sucks a lot. I’m dying. You have no idea.”
To which I respond: “Should I call 911? You know, I’m not CPR certified. Can’t have you dying on me.”
I’m a loving wife. What can I say?
What’s your stance on TV/cable? Have you cut the cord? What’s stopping you?
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I’m a sports fan so I have to help your husband out. My sport is football but I understand the March Madness craze. http://www.ncaa.com/march-madness It’s $3.99 to stream all of the NCAA games live. NBA probably does it too. I know the NFL does. But NFL and MLB air local games on the local channels so he might not be missing much. You can even hook your computer up to the TV to see it big. But he’s an engineer so he knows that!
I have to applaud you for cancelling cable. My parents did that when I was in high school out of financial necessity and I survived. That was way before internet too. We now use our DVR, tape the shows we want to see and the rest of the time its off. Unless it’s football season of course!
well, we haven’t had cable in a long time and have loved it! we have netflix so would watch movies and then a couple of tv shows we could catch online. recently, i was reading something (can’t remember what now) and was motivated to stop watching our two weekly shows we just “had” to watch. just last night, cade said he really liked it. we read a lot more and talk more. get to bed early. it’s really nice. just for the record, it’s not that we are against media or anything. we do watch movies, and our kids watch cartoons on saturdays. we just didn’t like watching tv so much. as a side note, it’s also nice to not be bombarded with advertisements and other stuff. tv moves really fast and now i can barely keep up with it. and i think it insanely cute that my kids ask “what are those funny short movies?” and are awed at the tempurpedic commercial –“wow! look at THAT mom! the wine doesn’t spill!!!!” priceless. :)
Someone already said it but March maddness is $4 for ALL the games online.
And we don’t have cable. We have friends with cable and we watch theirs but i do not want cable now or ever. We have talked about NO tv when we have kids. I didn’t grow up with tv or cable and so I’m not a fan.
we are a no tv family. we have one… with rabbit ears :) we get pbs and the basic stuff. it is lovely. we are going on 12 years of no cable. we are still alive and we are not amish either :)
Trish´s last blog post ..the bestest granola bars evah…
We go on and off with tv. It’s a sports thing for us too. Football season we end up getting basic cable so we can hope to catch the few games the Broncos are going to win. After the super bowl I called the cable company to cancel. When she asked my reason I said, “Football season is over.” There were a couple seconds of silence then, “Well, that’s a good reason, I guess.” It took the wind out of her sail in trying to convince me to keep it, though.
I’m with you. There is so little TV that I enjoy. Most of it aggravates me. I invariably end up in a bad mood after watching it. Somehow I still don’t get it through my head though. So when we do have cable I think, “I’ll relax for an hour or two and watch something.” If I’d have sat and read for an hour or hung out with my husband, I would be relaxed. But after an hour with the tv I’m all crabby-fied. It’s like a breath of fresh air to turn it off. And yes, we do watch our favorite shows through Hulu or rent the season once it’s over from the local movie rental store.
Janice´s last blog post ..In a nutshell
You know you can stream march madness for four dollars at NCAA.com. Our tv broke about a year ago and it took us six months to notice. We don’t miss it. Good luck.
Teehee! How much do I love that graphic you used??!!
We have NEVER had cable or satellite TV. Not only do I not want to spend a bunch of money every month, but honestly, I think most of what’s on TV is brain-cell-killing JUNK. And a lot of it is inappropriate.
We just have an antennae that Kevin uses when he wants to watch a football game. Any TV shows we want to watch are on DVD from the library, or Hulu or whatever. We’re just not really a TV family, and I LOVE that. We read and spend time together in the evenings and occasionally watch something on the computer, but our TV is never going.
AND, I’m JUST like you in that I have so much ambient KID noise (which I’m learning to embrace), I don’t want any OTHER noise–no CD’s or talk radio or videos blaring. Just the sounds of my kids beating each other up and tattling. :)
Anyway, good for you guys! Hopefully Andy can find a good solution for his March Madness viewing and shoot, maybe you’ll take up playing board games afterall! :)
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i miss the sports, but have gotten acclimated to catching highlights online.
we have enjoyed netflix only-and not even much-for six years.
i am all for keeping tv silent:)
xo
hannah singer´s last blog post ..he gives grace
Man, can I relate! Hubs is good with cutting out the cable, his family is another story.
I am about to leave work to stay home with our 7-month old. It’s just time. We’re cutting our income by 45%, so obviously we need to trim the budget. Satellite was the FIRST thing on the chopping block. It’s only $60.99 a month for us, but that’s $60 that can be used somewhere else. Hubs is okay with it. Sure he’ll miss his shows, but we’ll stream Hulu through our internet (it’s only $35 a month) and renew our Netflix service, and he can listen to sports live online as well while he’s tying flies, playing with our daughter, or doing something else, so it’s not like he’ll miss out. I don’t give a hoot about TV, so it’s not bothering me.
My family totally understands. His family straight up flipped out. From every single member we got “what are you going to do at night?”, “what about the weekends?!?!”, “what are we supposed to do when we visit you?!”. Well, to answer #1, we will spend time together as a family. We will read, do puzzles, play games, and it’s not like we’re throwing the tv away. We will watch movies and some seasons of our favorite shows on dvd. To answer #2, we will get out of the house! Explore our world, go to the library, play at the park!! To answer #3, you only visit us ONCE a year and your only priority should be spending time with your son/brother and your granddaughter/niece, not what’s on tv! Okay. Rant over. :)
On a side note, if I cancelled satellite while hubs was at work, without really talking to him about it, he’d flip out, too. Just on principle, not over the fact that I was doing it.
When we lived in the middle of nowhere boonieville and had 1 option, that was over $150 a month for the MOST BASIC package. SICK! After visiting my brother out of state who didn’t have cable/dish, I canceled it the day I got home. It was SO NICE to have the kids reading books, and the family sitting on the floor with them talking. NO TV! I had a comcast rep. ask me the other day what service I had and what I paid for cable. I very firmly told him I had an antenna, that was FREE, I get 3 channels, and I was thrilled that my son would NEVER have the option of watching Sponge Bob. :) After GMA is done in the morning, the TV goes off and we go outside.
Kelly´s last blog post ..Summer in March
Hi. I didn’t have cable growing up, had it in college dorm, then decided once it was up to me to pay my bills after college, that cable was just not something I needed in my life. I make do with netflix, hulu, and internet and keep up pretty well. However, I wanted to let you know… you shouldn’t have to pay $7/month for basic NBC, ABC,CBS etc. Unless it comes with some legit cable channels (ie TLC/Discovery/ESPN, etc) you are still paying too much. You can get the local news channels (nbc, abc, cbs, wb, fox, upn, pbs) for free through your tv only… I have a TV from 2009 and it gets the signal just fine all the time. i don’t pay for tv at all (except for energy to plug it in). If you have an older tv or one that for some reason needs a stronger signal detection, you can buy a wide variety of inconspicuous antennas at walmart/target for 5-30 bucks depending on how poor your current signal is… so paying $7/month for basic is a rip off from your company. But, to each his own and 7 is WAY better than 100. Congrats!!
When my husband and I were first married we had cable. We could justify it because we lived in an apartment and we had terrible reception with just the local stations. But when we moved into our first home that was something that we talked about a lot! I’m like your husband :) I like noise and always have something on tv…radio…pandora… My husband however is like you. He likes it quiet… Match made in heaven right?!
Long story short…we decided to just go with basic tv and we have netflix. I love it. It was a great decision for our family!
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I have been without cable for 8 years now. (there was a brief 3 months in there with a basic extended package) I don’t want to pay for it either. It comes down to the price. I also have never really watched much TV. Growing up I hated what my mom and brother wanted to watch so I always went and did other things. I habe joked about how noisy thr house gets after daddy gets home. Mommy anf two babies noise level 2-3, daddy gets home 8-9. He wants to turn the TV on right away. I guess it’s fine, but then drives me ceazy trying to talk to me over the tv. He also often turns it on, to search online from his phone on the couch, not even paying attention.
We did the same thing and the representative was SHOCKED. Thought I was kidding.
We physically have a TV, and get local channels, and Netflix on it, but we haven’t had anything other than local channels for a LONG time. I remember when we cancelled it (also my husband likes sports), we didn’t miss it. AT ALL. In fact, now, I wonder what we even watched? And, of course, we pay for internet, which is through the cable provider. Those sales guys are so funny when you want to get rid of things – they’ll keep you on the phone for a year and a day if that’s what it takes!
Jenny´s last blog post ..Chasing the sandman
By the way – you might also enjoy this post – from a friend of ours, who writes a financial blog – they called it the same thing – the cord. http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/05/06/mmm-challenge-cut-your-cash-leaking-umbilical-cord/
Jenny´s last blog post ..Chasing the sandman
Nope, absolutely not – not gonna cut my cord. I want my cable!!! In fact, we recently added whole house DVR so the taped shows would be on any of 4 TVs throughout the house. Cutting my cable would definitely be a deal breaker.
Just had to add the voice of decent – that’s what keeps in interesting, right?
Agreed. I’ve had cable and not had cable, and currently don’t have cable. I have Netflix and I have broadcast channels but I miss my on-demand and I miss seeing the shows I can’t get elsewhere. I watch <3 hours of TV a week easily but when I do, the things I want to watch are on cable. Plus I don't like dealing with reception issues.
Love cable. LOVE IT. Brilliant, convenient, and with variety. Absolutely overpriced, but great to have.
Meredith, you are my homie. ;-)
We have cable. But, we just got it around Christmas. My husband also works from home, so the internet and phone are non-negotiable. There happened to be a deal where it was only going to cost $5 more/month to add the digital cable, all 5000 channels. But, you know what? I hate it. I can never find anything that I want to watch on the tv, and everyone always raves about on-demand, but I would much rather just use Netflix and Hulu Plus on my tv – we have an internet tv. So, next December, when the price of our package decides to go up to $180/month, we will be getting rid of Cable :-)
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My hubby and I have been married for about 3 1/2 years, and we only had cable for a few months (when our apartment complex offered it for free). When we moved, I was honestly glad that it was gone (apart from HGTV!). We get a few local and basic cable channels by using a digital antenna and we also get the basic Netflix package. I love not having the temptation to put on the TV for endless hours and just waste time. We’ve met some people we think we are crazy, but the money we save (plus the time we gain!) make it all worth it to me. I hope we never get sucked in!
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We cut the cord about a year (or two?) ago. And don’t miss it ONE bit! We have Netflix and watch movies on the weekends but that’s about it. $8 vs $90…definitely worth it. I’ve contemplated throwing away the TV as well though… No more movies, video games, nothing. I’m not so sure I won’t do it one of these days :)
Well, since you regularly call me Amish, you know where I stand on this. ;)
We have rabbit ears. Currently they have aluminum foil around the tips. We get a few channels that can make it through the rabbit ears. I can watch Adam Levine on The Voice. Good enough for me.
My hubby isn’t a basketball guy, but he is an NFL / Chicago Bears guy. For big games that aren’t on Fox, he can go hang out in town at a sports bar or restaurant that has a billion TVs. Even if he did that every game it would still cost less than Dish. He’s happy with the arrangement but almost never goes to watch. He can stream the plays on his iPhone. There is no cable offered out here in the beans. We do have a free Hulu account. No Netflix.
We pay a total of $0 / month for TV. :)
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Its been about 6 months since we cut our cable completely. We have an antenna (I know old school, right??) and it gets us the basic channels like ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX and of course PBS for the little girl. I know my husband misses ESPN and FOX sports. We do Redbox so we get movies most every weekend. It’s not bad but I do occasionally miss some mindless TV like Real Housewives. :)
No cable here either!!! The bills are ridiculous! My husband works at Netflix so we have free streaming and DVD’s. Also, you don’t have to pay for those basic channels either. Just buy an HD Antenna. Ours was $13 and we even get PBS kids for the cartoons.
We have gone a year without cable! We have an antenna which gets local channels, we do Netflix and have Tivo…. so I can still DVR shows to watch later because who has time to watch shows when they actually come on? I love the simplicity of it… no flipping through 100 cahannels to find something to watch. I must admit that I do miss some of the TLC shows that I can’t watch online.
We too are cableless. We have been for quite a while and recently when changing providers we tried it again only to cancel it a few month later. We just don’t watch it. We stream Netflix and while I miss tlc sometimes I will live and when I had it I grew tired of most of the shows anyways. We use a antenna now and while I get annoyed when I can’t get PBS to come on for the boys unless I get it in the perfect position overall it is great.
Becky@oursweetpeas´s last blog post ..Life
I am just like your husband. I have to have the noise even with a house full of children.
We don’t have any cable, and the only station our digital receiver can pick up is PBS. Which is totally ok with me and my hubby. We do have the streaming Netflix on our TV. We’ve had it this way for a few years now… and we’ve only missed broadcast TV just a handful of times. Neither one of us are big sports fans, so that helps.
Oh, and we’re due with our babies about the same time (july 17th for me)… and mine is a little boy too! :)
I need the noise as well, especially to sleep, and so does the hubs. But, we dropped our cable over a ear ago and I will probably never go back. Same thing got us, the cost! It’s outrageous. We do HULU & Netflix and have the local 2, 6, & 9 channels and get by just fine! I do miss the occasional HGTV or Lifetime move, but it’s not a huge loss.
Heather @ Life as we know it…´s last blog post ..What I Wore on Potty Training Day 2
I ditched cable about a year ago and hardly miss it all! I have an antenna for local channels (Comcast wanted to charge me $27 for those channels – no thanks!) and I use Netflix.
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We got rid of cable four and a half years ago, after my oldest DD was born. I quit my job, and our income went down….a LOT (by over 50%), so that was the first to go. We don’t even have local channels. We stream Hulu, Netflix, and Pandora on our Blu-ray, and we have plenty of movies for entertainment when we need it. But overall, I was SO glad to get rid of that ridiculous expense!! :D
we cut cable and switched to netflix over 2 years ago and it is nice. The kids are able to watch plenty of their shows and we have internet, so hubs and i can watch some of the shows we watched on cable online instead. Saving 100 dollars a month was worth it!
I’d be cable-free if I could, but my apartment complex requires all renters to buy cable. =( I never watch it….
My husband and I have been married for 5 years. And in those 5 years we’ve never had cable. We both had it before we got married, but we were so broke when we got married we just couldn’t afford it. Even now that we could, we don’t want it. It is something that has been discussed, but we just can’t justify spending that much money for crap TV. We had basic tv and Netflix and we doing pretty good with that.
Oh I can relate to your husband. For the most part, I like having noise. Whether it be the tv or some sort of music, I like having background noise. And I have, have to have a fan on when I sleep. There are the few occasions that I do like having it quiet, but as long as it’s not TOO quiet. My husband is the complete opposite.
Well, I’m in Australia, so I’m not entirely sure how that compares, but I have only ever had free to air tv. Up until a few years ago, that meant 5 channels, more recently there have been a lot of changes and there are now 18-20 channels. I rarely get the chance to watch all the things I’d like to with that, so don’t know why I’d need to add more. There are some issues here with previously free to air sports going to pay tv only, but that doesn’t bother me as I’m not a sports fan.
Yay for family time! :)
Bronwyn @ Mad Crafty Mama´s last blog post ..Change of Identity
We’ve been over 3 years without cable or satellite and we’re doing just fine. We don’t miss it for a minute.
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we cut cable about 2 years ago. It hasn’t been too bad for us. my husband isn’t a sports fan. but I am. And I miss March Madness like crazy :(
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No cable, no TV. I have netflix instant and watch it on my awesome 17 inch macbook pro :) I used to have cable and all the channels…
I watched trash, so I felt like trash. I think I lost some perspective, too. I just didn’t feel like it was a good use of my time.
I moved in August and that was my point of no return. I was a little nervous and now I wonder, why didn’t I do it sooner?
I love how the guy you spoke to was so huffy about you not telling your husband. Because it’s 1950 and all :)
So funny that you posted this today. We have the same argument in our house – I want to cancel, but he wants to keep it for hockey. This week we have been keeping it off and I just love the silence! And I really notice a difference in our 2.5 year old. We are able to give her more attention and in return she is less feisty and more agreeable.
Might look into streaming NHL, because if that exists, we’d both be happy!
oh wow, I don’t think I could loose our cable. I love it. I love the on demand and our dvr. I have to have internet for work to work from home. And its funny to hear you all talk about those cable guys. My hubby is one of those guys and is paid to keep you from canceling. Don’t hate them, it’s their job, and it puts the money in our pocket to pay our bills. I am going to tell him about your story so he can use that on wife’s who call to cancel. :D And in case anyone is looking to save money most company’s are trying to lock you into a contract we have one with comcast. We got 2 years of all 3 services for 99 a month, and this year our contract was up, it went up 10 bucks, when we signed another… not happy about it but still doable for us. I figure, its going to cost us 60 bucks for internet anyway we might as well have the phone and our TV.
Why bother with cable or a netflix account? There’s constant ads on tv for all the different cable companies around here and there’s just nothing on there that I’d want to watch. You can buy the complete set of your favorite show on dvd or bluray for cheaper than a cable subscription! :p We had a quickflicks account but it just wasn’t worth the money.
Kara´s last blog post ..My baby bears!
We cut it for the second time a few months ago. I can’t justify paying for Dish Network when I have to use WIC at the grocery store because we’re so “low income”. We don’t miss it b/c we have Netflix and movies and internet and my husband isn’t a sports fan, but sometimes I do wish I could watch the Today show and I’m going to camp out at my parents for a few days this August to see some Olympics (which is why I broke down and added it back in Feb. 2010). I miss HGTV too, but it’s probably for the best since House Hunters just makes me grouchy that I can’t house hunt and no one is volunteering to come in and make my house sale-worthy. And the lack of noise is nice, isn’t it? I’ve discovered that all tv does is make my kids fight more.
I’m more like your husband…I like to have background noise. I went from having my mom & 4 sisters around ALL the time to being by myself for most of the day while the mister is at work. If I don’t have music playing/a show going, it’s SO QUIET, and it drives me nuts! But, we don’t have cable. I listen to Pandora, we have netflix and watch certain shows online. I wouldn’t want to have actual cable, though – I watch enough TV just on Netflix! ;)
Jacky {The Sweetest Petunia}´s last blog post ..just a few thoughts.
4 years ago we got rid of DirecTV (no cable available in the boondocks). I got tired of the bill going up and feeling that there wasn’t really much that was worthwhile to watch. We bought an antenna for the house and it has worked out quite well. We enjoy Netflix and my kids love PBS. When the weather is nice the TV is rarely turned on…..we don’t feel deprived at all. I am surprised by the reactions of others when I say that we don’t have cable or a dish….it’s like telling them that you don’t have indoor plumbing!
I’m jealous. I want to give up our TV–or our extended cable for so many reasons, money being a huge one. But my husband is big into sports too and he’s just not ready. I’m going to keep praying though…maybe he’ll have a change of heart!
Corrina´s last blog post ..Insta-Friday
We don’t have cable (and haven’t had it since our marriage.) Part of it is due to cost and part is because I really don’t think it’s necessary and my husband wasn’t super into watching sports on TV. He does enjoy watching now, but he’s so used to not having cable that it’s not a big deal not to have it.
I’m not sure what we would have done if my husband insisted on it- TV drives me a little looney after a relatively short time.
Sarah´s last blog post ..Bittersweet Minus the Bitter Part
We gave up cable 6 months ago. Before that, we were obsessed with TV. Our DVR was always full and the TV was always on. I thought it would be really hard to give it up, but it wasn’t. We now watch only a handful of shows through Hulu, and we have a subscription to Netflix mostly for some kid shows. My husband pays a small price to watch sports through the internet, and he seems happy with that setup. I am so happy we made the switch. It was getting too expensive and was taking up too much of our life. I don’t think I will ever go back.
The very same thing happened to me about a year ago I went to cut the cord and the cable guy convinced me that it would be cheaper to just keep basic cable. I’m still not really sure how that works out all I know is that now we over compensate with Hulu Plus and Netflix. Bummer! But, I have also implemented a rule on Sundays that there is to be no technology of any kind. This one is really hard for the grown ups, ahem… especially this grown up. But it’s my own rule. I have to lead by example. On Sundays, I often think … I should make this rule for more than just one day a week because it really is amazing the transformation around here. We have a family of 6 and somehow we all survive Sundays :) I love it! But then, come Monday morning I rush back to My Maccy like a kid running to the candy shop. Sigh. Maybe someday a true unplugging will take place.
Noel´s last blog post ..Poetry and Reflections on Phil 1:7
Good blog post. I definitely appreciate this site. Thanks!
health´s last blog post ..health
Loved this post!! Last month was my final month with a subscription! Ironically I was searching my “streaming options” and stumbled across this blog. Great story. I’ve been paying about 120/month myself and have recently been paying close attention to how much I’ve really been watching. Basically, sports only and the occasional movie in bed. Sooo… I decided to opt out too! My first test has been the NBA Playoffs (huge bb fan) and I’ve found it to be incredibly easy: http://www.real.com/resources/how-to-watch-nba-playoffs-live-online