Surviving Without Cable

One of the lifestyle choices that I make that happens to save cash each month is to not have cable TV.  In fact, we have a television set, complete with many fancy options, but it sits in the corner unplugged.  My husband has never really liked watching TV and didn’t have one in his house.  When I moved in, I let him know that I would probably have cable installed to be able to watch my news channels and other occasional programs.  Well, that was several years ago, and I have never called the cable guy or even plugged in the set.  The primary motivation behind eliminating television watching is to allow for time to do other things such as reading or exercising.  I must admit, that at first I was apprehensive over giving up TV, thinking that I might suffer withdrawal.  Instead, I’ve found that I don’t really miss watching at all, and now when I travel and have a television set in the hotel room, I turn it on only sporadically to catch the news.

Last year, during the US Presidential election, I knew that I would want to watch many of the events including debates, parts of the political conventions and election night itself. I thought about having cable service turned on for a few months, but then I found that it was relatively easy to find live feeds of many important events on the internet.  Between MSNBC, CNN, and the Comedy Channel, (plus numerous political blogs) I was able to follow the events that I wanted, many of them real time.  Now that the election is over, I’m happy that I didn’t sign up for cable then, as I usually forget to cutoff monthly services promptly.  With cable subscription costs averaging between $50 to $100 per month, the savings add up pretty quickly.  If you are thinking of scaling back or cancelling TV, you might try the following:

–Scale back TV offerings to the very basic package.  Although the premium offering may give you 40-50 more channels, I was always disappointed with most of them. You may find your interest declining.

–Try a TV fast for a week, or better yet a month — It will surprise you at how many other things you have time for.

–Schedule other activities — if you used to have a special show that’s on every week, schedule a block of time to read or to attend a class you’ve been wanting to try like yoga or art.

–Explore alternatives to catch your favorites — including hulu.com and netflix and blockbuster for the DVD series of your favorite shows.  Most news channels have clips available on the internet.

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