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Article Updated December 2019

So we finally did it! We cut the cord! The cable cord that is! I don’t know why, but it took a long time for us to commit.

I remember my college dorm supplied our rooms with internet and cable and I would oftentimes fall asleep to Law and Order: SVU replays after a long night of studying. I had a little 19″ TV that fit perfectly on my dresser. When I eventually moved off campus and had my own place, I only invested in obtaining high speed internet and packed the little TV away. Anything I wanted to look up or watch I could do from my laptop. As I recall, the hubs didn’t have a TV in any dorm room except the main living space his senior year in college, and also didn’t subscribe to cable during his doctoral studies. If we wanted to watch something we just found it and watched it on our laptops.

Fast forward to our last year in college when we on our clinical rotations in the apartment I started renting in college. We were less stressed and not studying all the time, so surely we could get cable, right!??! So we added cable to our internet package. I remember hooking up that little 19″ TV in our decent sized living room and it looked so tiny! That Thanksgiving evening, when stores were starting to open for their Black Friday deals, we convinced ourselves that this would be the perfect time to get a bigger TV that was more proportional to the size of our living room. It would also be on sale, so we’d be saving money…score! That night we walked away with a 50″ TV that barely fit in my car 🙁 I remember us setting it up the next day and it was too big for our TV stand we were currently using. Well, eventually we’d just need to get a bigger TV stand!

We’ve moved quite a few times since our first apartment. (Our main reason for moving out of that first apartment was so we’d be able to get a puppy! We watched so many corgi videos when we didn’t have TV!) Ever since, we’ve had cable. It was either included in rent or we paid for it. In our current house, we actually had internet, cable, and a landline due to obtaining an introductory rate. But did we ever really need all of it? Of course not!

Everything we watched was DVR’d, because everything we watched was on way past our bedtime. Also, all those commercials! With DVR we could just fast forward through them. Sometimes it would be weeks before we could clean out the DVR (aka watch our shows) and it felt more like a chore than enjoyment. Or I’d find myself doing other things and I would just have the TV on in the background. I wasn’t watching intently, I was just wasting money on electricity!

So we finally cut the cord on cable when our current rates were set to increase. We ended up buying this antenna so we could still get all the locals in HD. Remember…the hubs LOVES football! Have we missed cable? Not really!

1. I have more time to read the books that have been on my reading list forever
2. I can fully focus on the task or project I’m working on
3. I have more time to learn new things and create
4. I’m not mindlessly wasting electricity or money (I’m saving money on electricity and cable!)
5. If I’m really invested in a TV show, I’ll be willing to find it online

Did you read that last bullet point? I’m not all of a sudden against watching TV. I just realized that if I’m truly invested in the show, I’ll be willing to put the effort in to find it on the internet. I’m still a huge fan of Suits (although it won’t be the same without Mike and Rachael 🙁 ) and I’ve been eagerly awaiting Amy Poehler and Nick Offerman’s new show Making It which just aired last week on NBC. Nowadays, most networks will post their newest episode online 1-2 days after the show first airs. It’s super simple to watch your favorite shows online without paying anything! While you have to pay for DVR with cable (it’s considered an “upgrade”), you can watch the show online for free with limited commercials (read this as more commercials than just fast-forwarding with DVR, but much less than if watching it on TV). It’s a win-win regarding saving money and watching the shows you really do want to watch.

But what about our actual, physical TV!?!?? So the good thing about this is we still have that same TV we initially bought all those Thanksgivings ago. One of the gadgets we bought when we were college kids without cable was a dongle that gave us the ability to attach our laptops to our TV. So if I want to watch my show on the big screen, I can. If I want to lay in bed and watch my show, I can also do that. Now we will actually be using a product we bought years ago.

We had also looked into the alternative TV subscriptions as well when we got rid of cable, but we had decided to give the antenna a try first. If we didn’t miss cable, why would we need to pay for more subscriptions? For those of you thinking that you might want to cut the cord (unless you’ve already done so) or are looking at cable alternatives, here’s what we found. By the way, there are so many more subscription services out there now! Below is a few of the major ones we looked into.

1. Sling – While the initial price of $25 is very tempting, I found the prices very misleading as everything felt like it had an up-charge. Their best priced all-inclusive package is $40, but you don’t get all of the networks (in a rural area this can be frustrating). If you want DVR, then it’s an additional $5 per month. There’s also a ton of other additional TV packages that you can add-on, and pretty soon you’re TV bill will be bigger than it was before. Compared to YouTube TV (see below), it seemed sub-par.
2. Netflix – Who doesn’t have Netflix these days? It has definitely evolved for the better since they first started. It’s great for binge-watching whole seasons of a show. They have also started creating their own content. Each month they drop some titles but add new ones. It also appears that Netflix is adding newer shows and movies sooner. If you are one who likes to avoid the price of movie theaters and wait until it comes out, Netflix seems to obtaining these titles for streaming rather quickly. For a free month trial and then $13.99/month for their premium package it’s a great deal. Ultra HD is available, you can stream 4 screens at once, and you can also stream on any device. As long as you aren’t into watching the latest episode of your favorite TV show when it airs live, Netflix is a great alternative.
3. Hulu – They have 2 plans, one relatively cheap at $7.99/month. You can stream on any devices and have unlimited access to their streaming library, however there might be some commercials. It’s an additional cost if you want no commercials. I don’t see why I would want to pay for Hulu’s cheapest option when I can do the same exact thing directly from the TV channel’s website with probably the same amount of commercials. Their second plan is in beta testing, and is $39.99/month. You can watch live TV on any device, have unlimited access to their streaming library with limited commercials, and have access to on-demand TV channels. You still have to pay additional for DVR or unlimited screens. To me, YouTube TV was still a better deal. With a DVR, I don’t see the need for On-Demand TV with commercials.
4. Philo – It kind of reminds me Sling, only cheaper. It has a similar TV lineup but their basic package is $16/month and their premium package is $20/month. You can get a 7 day free-trial and it comes with DVR. You can DVR as many shows as you want (no limit) but you can only save them for a max of 30 days. You also have the option to stream TV on up to 3 devices. If you currently use Sling, Philo might be worth taking a look if you want to save some money.
5. Youtube TV – this one we had seriously considered IF the antenna didn’t work. With YouTube TV you get all of the networks and most of the popular TV stations. For $40/month you also get 6 accounts per household each with their own login and DVR. Your DVR has no storage limits and it works across all of your devices. You can get a 2 week free trial of YouTube TV here. To us, this was the best bang for our buck, but our internet and TV bill would be the as our first year “promotional price” with our cable company. We wouldn’t be saving money, but we wouldn’t be spending more either.
6. Amazon video – So we have had Amazon Prime for a little over a year now and it’s amazing. However, I’m ashamed to say we never utilized Amazon video! So while flipping through Amazon Video we found a few shows that we might be interested in and we saved them! We also can stream either on our phones, laptop, or TV. If you don’t have Amazon Prime, I’d say that Amazon video is not worth it, but it sure is a perk to be utilized if you do!

Like I said before, we decided to try out just the antenna first to see if we even missed TV. The antenna seems to work well and we haven’t missed any “fluff” TV. We already have Amazon Prime, so it just makes sense to utilize more of our Prime benefits. And if I got whiff that one of my favorite shows was on Netflix that I wanted to binge, I’m sure one of my lovely family members would kindly let me borrow their Netflix subscription :). I’ve also been perfectly fine watching “Making It” online at NBC 1-2 days after it airs.

My main goal was that I didn’t want to get rid of TV and then sign up for a handful of subscription services by trying to piece together our previous cable lineup. There were a ton of channels on cable that we didn’t even watch, so we definitely didn’t need all of those channels. I also know many people who have cut the cord, but then have 2-3 or subscription services and of course are still paying for internet. What they don’t realize is that most likely it is costing them the same or even more per month than regular cable is! They are either still paying for something that they aren’t watching, or they are still wasting a ton of time in front of the TV.

The hubs and I only looked into six of the streaming services we thought we might be interested in, but there are many. Consumersadvocate.org has a great article that compares many of the other options at https://www.consumersadvocate.org/tv-streaming-services. If you are still on the fence about cutting the cord, definitely check out their article!

Update: We have now been cord-free for almost a year. I am glad we tried the antenna first. I feel I have become more productive since cord cutting. I’ve been reading more, learning new things, and am not just wasting electricity by having the TV on in the background. We’ve been watching Netflix and Amazon specials periodically, and we have rented movies from Amazon as well. These costs have been far less than the amount we would have spent on cable, and overall I haven’t missed TV.

Do you still have cable? Did you already cut the cord years ago? How many alternative TV subscriptions do you have?