How I saved $2000 by cutting cable and still watch everything I want!
As we all know, 2020 was a challenging year for most health-wise and financially. For us, we dealt with pay cuts, change in our jobs, and stress from the financial burden caused by the pandemic. I remember looking at everything we were paying for and determining where I could cut to help keep everything in balance. We had already cut our entertainment budget and were no longer eating out as much as we used to. We cut all the extras out, and still, we felt like we needed to do more.
For a few years, we had discussed cutting cable. Our monthly expense for cable was around $250-$300 a month. However, our fear was missing out on shows, live sports, and local news if we cut cable out. I researched for months to figure out what would work for us, what we needed, and how much we were actually saving. Was it really worth it to cut cable?
I’ve done the research, and I’m here to share it with you. First, I made sure there were no fees for cutting the cord with our cable company. Thankfully, we did not owe anything as long as the cable box was in good condition. We have smart TVs that we have been using for streaming already. However, we noticed that we had a lot of connectivity issues, and sometimes it would freeze. I read that an amazon fire stick could help because it acts as almost an external hard drive for your TV. I needed to figure that out before I could commit to cutting cable.
Before we cut the cord, I ordered an amazon fire stick. This gadget is the key to our success, and I highly recommend it. Click here to get yours. We started using the amazon fire stick with our Netflix subscription and started to get used to the functionality. This is a great tool to have because you can also travel with your firestick, or in our case, you can hook up your firestick to a TV outdoors and watch from any TV.
After researching several options for streaming TV, we found an opportunity that would work for us. AT&T TV provided us with the live sports my husband needed and local channels with easy access. This service costs $80 a month and is a step above the lower option of $60 a month. We also determined we wanted to get discovery+ and Apple TV, combined with our current Netflix subscription that we were already paying for, which brought our total for TV services to $106 a month.
The thing is, we were already paying for Netflix, so the reality is we were saving close to $2000 annually just by cutting cable. We did not have to upgrade our internet service; we did not change anything from our regular TV habits. I’m so happy that we chose to cut the cable cord because we have been able to manage our money a little more effectively with the savings.
If you are stuck in a financial situation or just want to save a little more money, I highly recommend looking into different TV streaming services. Below are links to the services we use.
Amazon Prime - Free Trial
Netflix
Discovery +
Apple TV
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