I thought my Cable and Internet package was $109 per month, it turns out that it was $129, and the cheapest internet only option on offer today is $50, so by cutting cable I get another $79 every month in my pocket. Living without TV was too much for me, so I did signup for the premium service on Hulu+ for $7.99 per month and also got the PlayonTV player for a 1 time fee of $39.99. This makes my annual TV costs reduce by a life altering amount.
Current charge for Television for 1 year $948
New Charge for Television for 1 year $96, plus the first year fee of $39 – lets spread that fee out over the next say, 39 years to show the savings:
Cut the cable and using Hulu+ and Playon for 39 years of $96+$1 = $3,783
Keep the conventional Cable for 39 years of $948 = $36,972
Saverocity Savings = $33,189, now lets put that into a nice savings program with a very modest 3% growth per year, compounded = $69.792
I am reducing my monthly costs in retirement by not having Cable then it could cover me for a couple of years.
Even if you aren’t ready to take the plunge, at the very least renegotiate your plan with them, when I called up saying I was thinking of cancelling cable they quickly re-quoted me a new price of $89 for the same Cable/Internet package I was paying $129 for – they hate to lose a customer and you can save a ton of cash by just keeping an eye on things like this and revisiting your monthly expenses. Don’t let those hard earned dollars slip away.
One thing to consider when cutting the cord is that the service you will be getting will not be as good as having cable, it will be close to it, and you will be able to get most of your channels, but not everything and sometimes a day behind regular broadcast – however these days I rarely watch regular TV, it is always on DVR or Startover so I watch on my own schedule. Therefore a site like Hulu.com with its Hulu+ offerings works well for me as it is a giant repository of TV Shows (full shows, and they air typically the following day, so you can watch the latest seasons of major shows) if you do decide to look into Hulu further they have a 1 week free trial right now so you can test it out – they do ask for a credit card though so watch they don’t start billing you if you don’t like it and forget to cancel.
Saverocity Protip: Go through the Hilton Shopping portal here and get 599 Hhonors points for free when you signup! Shopping Portal
The other thing to consider when making the switch is how the heck do you watch TV on your TV rather than your PC? I set up my home PC to be linked to my Flatscreen TC long ago, and use it for TV, Movies, Music, Photos etc, they have several HDMI Cables in newer model Televisions and providing that you get a decent graphics card for your PC you can play Blu-Ray quality. If you don’t have that set up, or don’t want it, you can also use a middleman, something that can communicate with the Internet to get you content and play through your television.
Products that do this might already live in your home – Game Consoles such as the Wii, PS3 will do the job, as will dedicated media servers like AppleTV and RoKu – these are all quite affordable these days, running at less than $100. And whilst it may sound like a tough job it really is plug and play with these devices.
I’m taking the plunge today and will let you know how it goes, I’ve also heard that I can get a digital TV receiver that can pick up stations which might be worth looking into, but one step at a time.
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