Five Years without a Cable Bill: Four Gains

Five years ago, we cut the ties and cut our cable bill in more than half.  We got rid of cable.  Once and for all.  Not going back and do not even want to go back.

In fact, I cannot think of anything we miss.   Maybe Astros baseball (which was remedied by an MLB pass and a VPN) or Hallmark Christmas (which was remedied by Sling TV – cancel anytime AND Netflix’s bountiful Hallmark and Hallmark-ey offerings).

Nope, we don’t miss anything about a cable bill. 

We have gained so much more!

Here are some things we’ve gained after cutting cable:

  • Money.   Over those 5 years, we’ve effectively saved $3600.  Just did the calculations.  Wow.   When we look on a monthly basis, $120 or $150 or $175 for the cable-only portion of your bill doesn’t seem like that much.  But when you look at that over a year, that’s $1440 or $1800 or $2100.   Always think of your optional bills on an annual basis to put a better and more complete perspective on it.

  • No-Muting Necessary. Like many people, we used to grab for the remote in order to mute those annoying and repetitive commercials.  Now we have no commercials because we only use Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Locast which is local channels plus some.

  • Contentment.  This is linked to the no commercial thing.   Have you ever watched QVC without instantly wanting whatever they are trying to sell?   Same thing with commercials – from getting a sudden craving for pizza during the game to wanting a new car during the late-night talk shows.  We don’t see what we are missing, so we don’t miss those things.

  • Time.  How much time was wasted sitting through commercials or flipping through the programming guide to see if any of the 250+ channels has something to watch.  In fact, if you really think about it, watching TV is a huge time-wasting activity.   Instead, we’ve taken trips to a local state park for hiking.  We’ve journeyed to our local dog park too to do some dog- and people-watching.  Ah, but this isn’t really a post about getting active is it?

Instead, we just want to encourage you to cut cable.  Besides saving money, increase your time and contentment.  Those are two intangibles that we never have enough of.