It was Time to Cut the Cord

High inflation is really taking its toll on the American consumer and most of us are trying to identify as many ways as possible to reduce our spending.  About 1-1/2 years ago, I changed my approach to television services and I am saving approximately $150 per month and anyone can follow this method too!

Like a lot of Americans, I had been with one of the two main cable services in my area for an extended period of time and the cost kept increasing year over year.  Before long, I was paying over $250 per month for cable and internet and really only watching about 5-7 channels on a regular basis.  Like most homeowners, I would get trial offers in the mail from the other company with a deeply discounted rate of $89/month plus equipment costs at least twice a month and finally decided it was time to give the other company a try.  With their discounted rate plus equipment, I was able to lower my monthly cost to about $150.  I was excited for the short term to be saving about $100 per month but after the one year trial offer was over, I quickly got back to the price I was paying with the first company and even exceeded it.  The cost was bad enough but to add insult to injury, sometimes these companies would exclude one of my local channels on occasion because of their contract disputes with those local television stations.

I had been a loyal customer to the first cable brand year after year until the value of what I was getting for my money didn’t add up.  I switched and quickly became loyal to the second brand but those prices quickly went up after the one year trial.  I tried to talk to each of those companies about ways to save money to no avail.  I tried to leverage the trial offers that I was now getting from the other company to find a way to stay but the customer service had no concern about loosing me as a customer.  They knew people switch back and forth.  It was almost like they expected it from everyone.  Should I just flip flop back and forth or was it just time to cut the cord?

I decided the later and it was a great decision!  Let me show you how you can do the same.

I did in fact switch back to the first company for internet services only because let’s face it, we all have to have an internet plan in this Digital Age.  The first company had the best high speed fiber optic service for the relatively nominal price of $65.00/month.  I had been happy with their service previously and was ok with this rate per month for 250mbps.  For my TV, there are now services like YouTube TV, Sling, Hulu and others that provide streaming of traditional cable channels to their subscribers.  The beauty of these services is the ability to choose the channels that mean the most to you as opposed to paying for 500 channels that you will never watch.  I chose Sling due to the flexibility and cost of $35/month for a plan that included those channels that I watch most.

I also invested in an indoor digital over the air antenna from Amazon for about $20 to be able to get my local channels.  I connected this antenna to the input for my coaxial cable distribution system in my house and now all of my TV’s work off of the same antenna for local channels.

Over the past 18 months, I have saved approximately $2,700 and will continue to save for the next 18 months and beyond.  I enjoy the same HGTV, Discovery, News channels, and local channels plus others that I did before but at less than half the cost.  The best part about what I have done is you can do it too!!!

If you have any additional questions about how you can do what I did, just reach out and let me know.  I would love the chance to be able to help you save some money too.  If you have other tips, please leave them in the comments below.