While staying home and watching TV or movies is less spendy than a night on the town, cable isn't cheap. I recently asked readers if they'd cancel cable to save and most said they could manage life without the boob tube. Here's why you say it's OK to disconnect.
- Been doing it since February! Saves me $55 a month (although my internet is $50) and forced me to be more active. Best decision of my life. (Plus, having Netflix for Wii helps). — le romantique
- Just moved and decided to go cable free. If we'd gone with the package I had previously we would be paying $120 more a month than we are now for just Internet. So far I don't miss it at all, we have plenty in our Netflix queue and Hulu to watch when we aren't spending time getting to know our new town. — darkangeldaria
- We pay $9 a month for the Netflix instant streaming to our Xbox, and we watch whatever isn't available on there on DVD or online. I'd much rather pay $9 than $50 for a bunch of channels I don't even watch. — bsglrok132
- haven't paid in for cable since I shared a house in college. I'm all about selective watching, so when Netflix WatchInstantly went unlimited a couple years ago, and when Hulu came along, I was set (I currently split my internet bill down the middle and gave my housemate my password to Netflix, so she can watch when I'm not). That and the occasional DVD rental from Netflix, a big network of friends who also review film (and love swapping screeners), and friends who have DVR so I can stay current with, say, True Blood, have made cable something I don't even consider. Even my parents went without recently and do the same things I do. — Anonymous
- No way! We are so addicted to our shows that we would go nuts without cable. We went to a cable-free resort for a week and we went absolutely bonkers without TV to watch. It's a small luxury that we budget for every month. We figure that we save more by having cable and not going out to movies/dinner as often. — Spectra
Burberry
Penhaligon
Fendi
My room has been cable free for a couple months now which sucks because I can't watch tv before bed, but I do use hulu a lot. It's such a great website =) The only downside is that they stream only 5 full videos at a time, and that's the max.
1My husband and I have never paid for cable. He used to have it when he lived with his parents, but it turns out neither of us are huge TV watchers, and any shows we want get posted online anyways, so we just hook up our laptops to the TV with an HDMI cable and have at it. Whenever I lived with people that had cable (my husband's parents, friends), I found that it sucked up a lot of time and there was almost never anything I wanted to watch on. Not having cable saves us money and time.
2We absolutely could not deal with no cable! hulu and netflix can only go so far! Most of my shows aren't available on either. So it'd actually be a waste of money to switch to services that I couldn't even fully use.
3My boyfriend and I have been cable free ever since we bought our condo two years ago. He was skeptical at first, but between the major networks, netflix, and hulu we really don't miss it at all.
4Been cable free for 2 years running now. My hubby (then boyfriend) had moved into an apartment during college and couldn't subscribe to cable because it was still under the name of the previous tenants. He was told to wait two months then try again. Two months came and he didn't care that he didn't have cable. We still have a TV primarily to use with netflix movies, our own collection, video games and as a hook up to one of our PCs, but we'll never go back to cable.
5Hopefully with more network attached TVs and better media players I would be able to stream/download all the programs I currently watch on satellite.
6My boyfriend had to move back to his home state this week..... so it's just me in the apartment now and I can't afford more rent AND cable. So I canceled it and will just be using Netflix and Hulu. We'll see how it goes! So far, so good. Anything I can't get on those sites I just download from somewhere....
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