We gave up a huge part of our lives and it feels amazing.
Cable TV. Well, TV in general I guess because we didn’t go and buy one of those funky antennas and don’t really plan on it. We called Verizon and had cancelled our service 3 weeks ago and we are so happy with our choice. Not only will it save us $125 a month (YES THAT IS INSANE) but we will save ourselves from time on the couch.
Let’s be honest. We’ve all sat down and turned on the power and flipped through 600 channels and found nothing good but settled on some stupid reality show marathon and then spent hours getting sucked in. What a waste.
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We already had a Netflix subscription and we added Hulu Plus a few months ago. Less than $25/month to have all those shows at our finger tips. We can still watch new episodes of Jimmy Fallon or Modern Family the day after they premier, which was already what we were doing with DVR. Amazon Prime members get access to their library as well, which we haven’t spent too much time looking through, but I know they have the seasons of Drunk History – WIN.
The only network that seemed to be missing from my streaming services was Bravo. I needed a plan to watch my favorite crazy housewives, so I made a deal with my husband. I can purchase those on iTunes, but I can only buy one at a time and I have to watch it on the treadmill. Another win.
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Sports is another issue, so we are researching different subscriptions that you can stream a bunch of different games and events. I think we’ll end up going to a few more live games this year instead of paying for any subscriptions, but we’ll see where my husband lands with this. We do have a TV in our rec room with cable if things get desperate.
So, this is not a public service announcement that you shouldn’t have cable, but I felt that it was my duty to tell any of you that have considered it, that it is pretty great. We’ve read more, wrote more, watched movies we haven’t seen in years and even in the cold winter, we’ve gotten out more.
Do you have cable? Is there something holding you back from quitting?
I'm seriously impressed! I think we could probably track down all of the shows we like online, but we do love watching sports and love the convenience of having it there on our DVR. All the power to you, though! I think I've heard of a small package called SlingTV that has a lot of sports channels. It might be worth looking into.
ahhhhhh! welcome to the club!
we bailed on cable and pretty much love it!
i get my bravo fix at the gym and it's not very consistent but i deal.
there are so many other (cheaper!) ways to get shows etc…and i work for a huge TV company! if we didn't get our service for free, there is NO WAY i'd pay for that shit.
We have cable only because my boyfriend loves sports and we wouldn't be able to get all the games without it especially since he's not from the Bay Area so his home teams are elsewhere. Before we moved in together, I only had internet and hulu plus and it was perfect. Good cal..
We cancelled our satellite for almost a year living off of Netflix, crackle and Apple TV. It was even better than having cable because you are much more mindful of what you are watching. I needed to watch another Say Yes to the Dress episode just about as badly as I needed another hole in my head. Now we invest in series and movies we want and discover new great documentaries and more educational shows we never would have watched through the cable! Enjoy! It is such a liberating feeling! We got the basic package back so we could watch sports though…we never found anything that gave us everything we needed for the games.
http://amypat101ca.blogspot.ca/
We've been cable-free for over a year and I haven't missed it at all! Like you said, with Netflix and Hulu you get just about everything you'd want to watch. It's pretty awesome! I certainly don't miss flipping through the channels.
When we moved in together, we decided not to get cable. And honestly- it has been glorious. I can always find something to watch- and I don't really miss anything. For sports, we have nice friends who have given us their Time Warner password- so we can login to the ESPN app on our Roku- so can't watch everything but a good number of things! Also- we have an antenna so we get the local stations- which includes all the Browns games…
I want to do this so bad! I find that we DVR the current shows 99% of the time anyway so we rarely watch them in real time.
That's such a great idea, to be forced to watch them on the treadmill! We've been contemplating cancelling our cable for awhile, but there are a few shows we can't find anywhere online!
I have been going back and forth about this decision for a while now. Bravo is definitely my hold up.
I grew up without cable, so as soon as I got my own place (10 years ago) I got cable. However I just cut mine off too. Honestly I don't watch that much TV, and with channels like CBS, HBO, and Showtime may become standalone channels soon, it makes cutting it that much easier.
We just canceled our cable recently too! We have a antenna'd TV in the bedroom, but I don't think we've watched it but twice in the last six months. We don't really have any shows that we watch every week anyway – it was mostly just the food network. With Netflix, we're pretty set!
You go girl!!! it's seriously CRAZY how much they charge for cable these days!! After we paid our debt off we decided to get it again after going without for 2 years. Since we were returning customers they wanted back we're only paying $50/month which I felt wasn't bad. However, I don't know if we even watch it enough to justify that, so there's a chance we'll get rid of it again. Going for awhile without it made us do more things!
I can't remember if I commented this here before, but my husband made his business off of something called the Mohu Leaf, an over-the-air television antenna for folks like you all! He engineered it when we were first dating, and it just took off! May be something you want to look into!
I have another roku for the upstairs TV and a flat antenna. This is happening for us soon.
We quit Directv 8 months ago. I won't lie, I was super pissed at the hubs when "we" made the decision. 🙂 But, it really isn't too bad. We have netflix and hulu too. I love to watch sports, that's why I didn't want to give it up, but we are saving a little over $100 a month. Crazy what we pay for entertainment!!
We cut it last year and haven't missed it at all!
Steve just cancelled cable on Valentines Day, and it's saving about $130 a month. We dont even know what the hell we were paying for. We have a Roku for upstairs TV and Amazon Fire for living room TV for all our needs. We've been missing Flyers games, but Steve found out a way to get them and will be working on that this weekend, weather permitting.. Seems like everyone is jumping ship these days!
I can't give up my sports, and neither can my gal. We are slaves to cable. Our high speed internet runs through our cable services. How do you keep internet?