My, but how time flies!
It feels like we’ve only had Hulu for a couple of years, but apparently it’s been almost five. Even my last post on how much we’ve saved was more than two years ago.
So I figured it was time to revisit the subject — especially now that people can cut the cord but still keep their favorite cable channels!
We were so naive
For years we thought that cable was our one justified expense. We’re home all day every day, and our health issues mean we stay in a lot.
But we started rethinking this rationalization around the time our Dish bill jumped to $100. Especially because Tim had been increasingly complaining that, despite all the channels, there was still nothing to watch during the day.
Initially I was skeptical that Hulu would be sufficient. But at $100 a month, cable/satellite needed to go.
Doing my research
I checked Hulu and was surprised by how much was actually on there. In fact, there was so much on there that I had trouble figuring out what was missing.
That’s why I always tell people to make a list of everything they watch regularly. Then you can check off the shows that are on Hulu and get a better sense of what, if anything, you’d be giving up.
Thanks to the combination of Netflix (which we already had) and Hulu, we were only losing two shows. Granted, I don’t love waiting til the end of the year for certain shows to come onto Netflix. But lately we’ve been falling behind on even the ones that we have access to weekly. So Netflix’s wait really isn’t that big a deal. (Besides, we enjoy being able to binge-watch shows.)
Another surprisingly good way to supplement your entertainment is YouTube. It’s not all cat videos and crotch shots. In fact, it’s got some great channels explaining science, others explaining random facts (I now know why fire hydrants are different colors and where the term “pleased as punch” comes from), some hilarious comedy channels and even news.
We also use the Comedy Central and CW apps to keep up with The Daily Show and our various superhero shows.
All in all, we don’t miss cable and we definitely don’t miss the bill. In fact, that lower cost — and the fact that we save our savings — means that just over $4,600 has gone into our savings account in the last five years.
No excuses
The most common reason I hear for not cutting the cord (besides simple misconceptions about streaming services) is that the person would miss ESPN, HBO or some other specialty channel too much.
That’s not an argument anymore.
Most, if not all, people know that you can now get HBO and Showtime without a cable/satellite subscription. But not everyone knows just how wide SlingTV’s offerings are now.
Besides ESPN 1, ESPN 2, etc., SlingTV now offers whole channels devoted to a single sport, like the NFL Network. I imagine that has to go a long way toward replacing a season pass that you’d get through a cable or satellite subscription.
Meanwhile, the company also offers most people’s favorite cable channels: AMC, TBS, Cartoon Network/Adult Swim, etc. Packages start at just $20 a month. Specialty packages — five kids channels, six lifestyle channels or 13 sports channels — can be added for small charges. Specifically, sports is $10 and most of the rest appear to be $5.
I’m sure some people will still find a reason to keep cable (maybe even a valid one), but most folks really have no excuse to not cut the cord.
Act now
Now is probably the best time of the year to look into cord-cutting.
Black Friday is coming up and will bring appreciable markdowns on streaming devices. (And you can buy those devices through cash back sites for extra savings.)
Meanwhile, Swagbucks is once again offering a 2,250 SB for trying Hulu. That’s enough SB for a $25 gift card. So even if you don’t end up keeping Hulu, you’ve essentially made a $17 profit.
It’s hard to argue with that.
Are you still holding on to cable? If so, what keeps you there?
We ditched Direct TV years ago, and haven’t looked back. We have gone to just using the basic $20 Sling package, and even that, we don’t use year round. Since we seldom watch TV during the Summer months we are go to being TV-free which saves us even more $.
Ooooh, smart! We’re definitely not TV free types, but it’s always awesome when others manage it.
We’re just Primers now and we barely even watch it. We have the most basic cable package but only because it comes with the internet service. Once a year at Thanksgiving we dig out the cable box and hook it up so we can have footbaw on in the background, mostly for our guests. The ESPN thing was a sticking point for us when we first cut the cord several years ago but The Mister’s point was we could get all that info online and SportsCenter just repeats itself all day anyway. We had been discussing re-activating Netflix to catch up on the last couple seasons of House of Cards but… well, not anymore 😛 We’ll be doing one month of CBS All Access so we can binge Discovery and then turn it off. I really think the future of television coming up soon is pay-per-channel, something many people have been wanting for years. Why pay for 1000 when you only watch maybe half a dozen? I think Amazon has something like this is the works, another step to total world domination, lol.
Wow, is Internet service really expensive enough to cover a two-fer deal? I pay an extraordinary amount, but that’s because I need a business line. I always assumed other folks could find affordable Internet. Maybe I’ve been out of the game for too long to know what’s reasonable.
Well, the Mister is in sales and that extends to his negotiating skillz when it comes to getting free stuff from Comcrap, who messes up our bill every other month. He has to call to get it straightened out and then usually gets something for free (basic cable, faster speeds, I think last time he got them to upgrade our modem at no charge- we weren’t paying the equipment rental fee anyway and we ended up with a better one). So I’m not entirely sure if tv & internet do come standard, it might just be an extra for us.
i haven’t had cable since I was a kid and never as an adult. Youtube, Netflix and DVD’s from library or Walmart keep me pretty much occupied. I don’t like to watch TV in the mornings before work because I feel its a distraction and when I get home in the evenings I usually tell my kids that TV only goes on after homework & chores & dinner so that usually only leaves about 1 1/2 gap of watch time. Weekends though are different story and my other half is a HUGE tv/ movie lover who can binge watch a series in 2-3 days. so that’s where other things can supplement. I just got prime the other day after cancelling it last year but im going to try to shop Christmas online this year so I figured at least ill get some cash back for that. Only thing I can think of is News? or if it came in a cheap bundle but we’ll see I might change mind on that cable thing.
Glad you’re able to stay away from it. I always worry about returning DVDs on time. On the other hand, we don’t have a working DVD player anyway.
yes I still have cable and see no cutting the cord in the foreseeable future. What I did to help MY bottom line was to ditch the cell phone and get a prepaid one. I save a lot on that because of MY situation…..your mileage may vary. Also I stopped getting my hair cut every six weeks. Just those two things alone probably have saved me approx. $1000 per year. I can hear some saying ” but you could probably double that if you cut the cord”. Well maybe, but right now this is right for me!
I’m glad the prepaid cell phone is saving you so much. Is keeping the cable just a personal preference or did you find too many shows were missing when you compared the services?
Personal preference. I love re-runs of old shows (1950’s-1990’s) and some new-ish shows too. I do have netflix though.
Ah, yeah if re-runs are your thing… Well, I’d check to see whether some of those channels have apps. But otherwise I get it.
We continue to have cable but we’re different than the vast majority of households. My mother is a retiree with full benefits from a company that AT&T bought. AT&T handled the retiree programs by creating one single package. So, we pay less than what most households would spend on internet only and that includes cable with every bell and whistle. Including premium channels and DVRs. If that went away? That cord would be cut so freaking fast.
Now, we do have Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime. The first two are because they provide original content that we’re interested in. The third is because most of our non-food necessities come via Amazon (this becomes even more true next week when I stop going into any physical retail store) and we’d probably forgo it if it was a separate charge. I’m just not going to quibble about keeping the TV service around because I’m interested to see what they do with Good Omens… basically the same reason I would add Starz to our monthly subscriptions for American Gods (Neil Gaiman? Never heard of him…). We’d probably end up springing for HBO because the husband is very fond of a lot of their shows.
One of the reasons that we’d have an easy time cutting the cord is because we received several Apple TVs as gifts over the years. There are so many apps for TV that it’s mind blowing. BBC, PBS, etc. It’s also great because we can take this thing that’s not much bigger than a hockey puck, connect it to just about any TV, and we’ve got everything right there. Including digital copies of purchases (aka, what happens when you give me an iTunes gift card… I read and I use Spotify, so we end up buying movies we would have rented because we need to use up the credited purchases). That being said, if anyone’s planning on doing this, please buy the products from google, Amazon, or Roku because they do very close to the exact same thing for a lot less.
Haha, I thought of you while writing this post. I remember the situation since it’s so unique. I guess I should have said “There’s only 1 excuse for not cutting the cord.”
We’ve had Sling for almost a year, and I have to say that for sports it’s been a little disappointing…several times Jon’s favorite team has played on ESPN or ESPN2, it’s been blacked out…even when it’s showing on his dad’s UVerse version. And it’s laggier than Netflix, Hulu, or Prime. Most of the time, though, we really enjoy the service, and Jon has just gone over to his dad’s house to watch the games.
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That sucks. I know that Hulu and YouTube are developing live TV options. Maybe that’ll work better?
Wow!! A hundred bucks a month for something that used to be free! Isn’t that effin outrageous!
I’m using Amazon, here. Did have Netflix, but canceled because of a connectivity issue…i have a low tolerance for technohassle. Agreed about YouTube: they have a surprising number of shows, although sometimes the Evil Empire (Google) does go through and remove things that people have quietly posted without the copyright owner’s permission. That IS annoying if it’s something you wanted to watch.
There’s a surprising amount of stuff that’s offered for free by the networks. You can see some of Rachel Maddow’s best, right up to date, for nothing. Some PBS shows are available free (though far from enough). And PBS news comes on after about 5 or 6 pm, whole show gratis.
Thanks to your post, I’ll check into Hulu — just at a glance, their offerings look promising and the price is not bad.
If you’re a Swagbucks member/interested in Swagbucks, I just saw that they’re offering 3,000 SB (aka $30) for a one month of a Hulu subscription. I’m not sure if that’s just for today. If so, then it’ll still revert back to 2,250 for a while I’d imagine.
I signed up for Hulu the last time Swagbucks had this sale. I kept it for 2 months past the free trial so still made some money but realized that I just don’t have the time to watch TV like I used to. Plus, I have Netflix and Amazon prime video. I was amazed at the amount of shows but disliked the frequency and number of ads.
Huh, interesting. The ads to me aren’t any worse than TV and tend to last less time. But if you’re used to Netflix/Amazon Prime, I can see where they’d seem plentiful. Glad you made some money off the deal, though!
We’re still holding onto cable for sports! we tried sling but it didn’t work well for us, connection issues I guess. Sports are pretty much all my husband cares about, entertainment-wise, so we ditched sling and went back to (ugh) comcast after he missed most of a few championship games due to that buffering stop-and-start thing.
That’d be awfully frustrating. Some of the apps are talking about an upcoming offer of live TV (YouTube and Hulu at least), so maybe those will end up being feasible alternatives for you. I guess we’ll just have to wait for the reviews.
We cut the cord in 2012 and never really looked back. I watch a lot of YouTube and make occasional forays onto our son’s Netflix and that, along with descriptive movies from the NC Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, gives me more than enough to choose from. I watch usually can’t be bothered to fool around with Netflix, so I doubt we’ll get an account when our son moves out.
I do miss a few very specific things. News, especially local news–though if I set up a radio I could catch NPR, which I prefer anyway. CBS’s suite of reality shows–The Amazing Race, Survivor and Big Brother. (Don’t judge me!) My favorite recap site went offline, but if I could track down good recaps I would probably be fine just reading those. And…nope, that’s about it, really.
I suppose I could look into a monthly CBS subscription, but I’m cheap. Or look into a stronger digital antenna than the one our younger son bought, which didn’t get much. But I haven’t been that motivated.
Glad cutting the cord has worked for you guys!
CBS charges for its app? Yikes! YouTube probably has good recap shows, though I suppose it’d take some searching. Netflix can definitely be overwhelming, but we love some of the original programming on there (plus binge-watching shows we missed during their seasons). And I’ve found a few things via suggestions it has for me or just a general search.
Not sure about their app–I never even thought about that. I went to their site to look for previous episodes, and it seemed like they wanted me to sign up for their premium service in order to get any of the content. Honestly, I didn’t poke around much because I wasn’t that invested.
I’ve heard really good things about Netflix’s original content, and I understand they’re working to add descriptive tracks to more of their content. I just never seem to get around to it.
If the site charges, then the app almost certainly does. As for the original content, yeah it’s quite good. I’m not sure how well the superhero shows would translate, but then again the action scenes aren’t always the best part. Jessica Jones and Luke Cage would be good even without seeing some of their feats of strength, I think.
As someone who watches very little TV – and the stuff I do watch is mostly available for free on catch up or for much lower costings for subscription packages, cancelling cable was an easy choice for me.
Always nice when the choice is easy!