It was Christmas Break, and I was in Big Lots. I got a text from my husband that said, "I cancelled the cable." I called him, because although he had threatened the cable company many times before, he had never actually cancelled the cable. When I talked to him, he confirmed what his text had said. He had actually, really, completely cancelled the cable. We had just moved into our house the week before, so we were busy and weren't actually watching that much TV, so it was not a huge, big deal. I had even told him in the past I'd like to try it, so although I was surprised, it didn't really bother me.
Every year, the cable company goes up on the rates. Every year, my husband calls and after waiting and talking for hours, he gets them to come down on the rate. That had happened this year, too. They had gone up from $80 to $110 for cable and internet, and he had called and got them back down to $85 a month. But then the bill came, and it was not $85; it was $110. He patiently called again to remind them that he had called earlier and negotiated the rate down. Normally, as painful as it may be, that works. This time, it didn't. They insisted that there was no way anyone could have given him that rate. So he cancelled.
He knew we couldn't do without internet, so he called another provider and got internet for $30 a month for the first 6 months and $42 a month for the remaining months. So we will save $80 a month for the first 6 months and $68 a month for the remaining months. That's $888 that we'll save this year, and $816 that we'll save in future years if we make it that far.
I have learned some things through this process.
1) Cancelling cable doesn't mean you can't watch TV. Who knew?!
2) You can hook your laptop up to your TV and watch shows for free from the major networks' websites if you don't want to watch them when they're normally on. Hence, our version of DVR. Yes, there are commercials, but not as many as when you watch on cable. Apparently, there's also a way to use your laptop to watch shows on your TV without hooking up an actual cable, but we don't have the right equipment for that yet, although we are looking into it.
3) Antennas are a lot smaller than they used to be. Ours is a very slender, square, black box about the size of a one subject notebook. This is what I use to watch TV when I need some background noise during the day.
4) When you have 2 children as young as ours, you're often too tired to watch more than 1 show a night anyway, and sometimes you don't even want to watch that!
5) For all these reasons, I don't miss cable as much as I thought I would.
6) Because of this and other reasons, I've been wondering if I should give up my smart phone and go back to a "dumb" phone. I think I would spend more time PRESENT with my loved ones if I did this and be a little less obsessive about checking my email, Facebook, etc. But, I'm trying to have more self-control and wean myself from my smart phone instead of giving it up completely because there are a lot of benefits to having a smart phone!
There have been some nights when none of "our shows" have new episodes to watch from the Internet. This happened when we had cable, too, but back then we could watch Home and Garden or Food Network if there was nothing else on. There have been some delays in the buffering and some frustrations when this happens. There have been a handful of times when I just want House Hunters International to take me away. But for the most part, it has been just fine.
I am not saying that we are perfect in the area of cutting back- far from it. I still have major weaknesses: nice furniture and professional photographs of my sweet boys are the main ones. Eating out used to be one as well, but having kids helped with that one. Regardless, I am proud of my husband for cancelling the cable because he gave up ESPN, which is a biggie. I guess for now we will just have to wait and see what happens come football season :)
I leave you with a question and a thought to ponder. Where could you save money? If you give it a try, you may find that you don't even miss whatever it is that you find the courage to "give up."
