You Do Not Have to Be a Millennial to Cut the Cord on Cable

It has been my experience that cable prices keep rising while you get less and less for your money. Last month I felt trapped, exploited, and hopeless! My cable service had become degraded and I started experiencing more frequent outages in December of last year. A couple of months later I got an extremely high bill that was even higher than usual. I called my cable provider and asked why and was told that my promotion ended and should have opted into another promotion to avoid paying regular price. What they failed to tell me was that opting into another promotion meant opting into a whole new contract and being held hostage for another year or two! Even though I opted into a new promotion my cable bill was still higher than before. It seemed that year after year that my cable bill was increasing and I was getting less and less for the ridiculous prices! I began to get angry, bitter, and resentful about how much I was paying for degraded cable service, so few channels, subpar customer service, obnoxious and frequent commercial interruptions, heavily degraded, and lack of reliable service. As the months went on the outages of my internet and TV services became much more frequent. In the end, my cable service was out 2-3 times a day every day! This made me furious and frustrated! I began to do diligent research and look for a way out!

I could not get any help from customer service so I reached out to the executive corporate headquarters of my cable provider. This led to weeks of emails and phone calls. In the end, I was able to get out of my new contract without an early termination fee since they were not providing me with reliable service. In the beginning, I was afraid to cut the cord on my cable that I would be left without the TV programming that I had grown accustomed to.

My elderly Mother lives with me and she enjoys TV very much. She does not know how to use a smart phone, tablet, or computer. She enjoys watching local news and weather, celebrity gossip, and talk shows. So before I cut the cord I had to get resourceful and figure out how we can keep all of this without paying our local cable company over $150 a month for heavily degraded and unreliable service. I was hesitating because while millennials get by just fine without a cable TV subscription I thought that since I am old fashioned and like to watch TV on a traditional TV and have an elderly Mother who does not use modern electronic devices like a tablet, smart phone, or computer that I could not cut the cord and continue to enjoy traditional local news, weather, and other shows on our TV screen like we have always been accustomed to. Thankfully, it turned out to be just a myth that we could not cut the cord because we are old fashioned and choose not to watch TV on a handheld device.

The good news is that we came out of this smelling like a rose and gaining more than we lost! Thanks to Amazon.com we are saving so much money and have even more TV! I feel like I have my cake and I get to eat it too! I am now in control of what I spend on movies and TV shows and I love it! I am not in any contracts so I feel so free again!

It all starts with internet, an Amazon Fire TV Stick, and an indoor HD Leaf Antenna with an amplifier. The Fire TV stick is only $29.95 and the antenna is around the same price depending on which one you select and order from Amazon. (The only installation for the antenna is sticking it up on the wall and connecting it to the TV.) I purchased a 75 mile radius antenna with an amplifier but you can get a 50 mile radius one for under $20 on Amazon. We live in a major city so we receive over 50 channels with our indoor leaf antenna for free!

Once you activate your Fire TV stick you get free trials of Hulu, Netflix, HBO, and more. After all of the free trials I felt like my Fire TV stick paid for itself within a month! You can try and if you do not like or watch them you can cancel after the free trial. (It is so much more convenient to cancel any premium channels with Amazon than with the cable company! You can do it with only a mouse click or two!) There are no contracts with these TV apps. You also get free movies and TV shows with your Amazon Prime Membership. (I have been an Amazon Prime Member since 2008 so I do not consider Amazon Prime an extra cost and feel like I am just receiving more bang for my buck with Prime TV.) In addition to this, there are many free apps you can download to the Fire TV stick and use to watch free movies and more without a paid subscription. Just to name a few there are Crackle, Tubi, and Pluto TV free apps. I love that I have a choice in how much I pay for TV and can cancel any subscription that I no longer want or use any time since there is no contract! It is so much easier to budget money this way!

During the day we watch news, weather, celebrity gossip, and talk shows via the over the air TV antenna. In the event that there is interference from construction, a helicopter, or bad weather we can livestream our local news and weather via the free CBS app from our local TV station on our Amazon Fire TV stick for without a subscription! (When you receive your Fire TV Stick check for free local TV channel apps for your area.) If we want to hear the news and weather and it is not time for the local news and weather we can ask Alexa for our flash briefing and she will play it for us! We are not left in the dark without a cable TV subscription! At night we generally watch TV on Hulu, Netflix, or Prime TV. We have so many choices as to what to watch now! The best thing about it is that with Prime TV and Netflix there are no commercial interruptions. In addition to this, now Hulu and CBS All Access also allow you to pay a little extra if you prefer to watch TV without commercial interruptions! I love having a choice in what I pay and to watch TV with or without commercial interruptions. I feel that I have more control for less money!

Now instead of paying over $150 for cable I only pay $40 for internet plus the cost of Hulu and Netflix and that is it for TV! So for under $70 I have more to watch than when I paid over $150 for my Cable TV subscription! When I did the math I estimated my monthly savings to be approximately $90 a month! I am so thankful that I cut the cord on my cable TV and walked away! I am happy to report that life without cable is much less stressful and more enjoyable!