My wife and I have come to a very important decision: we are cutting the cord. I know what you're thinking. The cord? What cord? What the hell are you talking about?
What I'm talking about is getting rid of cable. Now you're thinking, "What? You can't live without cable. What will you watch?" I realize that this a major life change, the idea of which many out there will find terrifying, but in reality, it's not as crazy as it seems.
And it’s not that I don’t like watching TV. Just the opposite in fact. While no medium can ever replace books when it comes to high-quality story-telling, there are many movies and TV shows out there that tell wonderful stories in inventive ways (i.e. Star Wars and Lost, to name just a couple).
So first of all, let's talk about why we’ve chosen to do away with cable. It all comes down to money. Our cable bill is currently over $100 a month. That's over $1200 a year, $12,000 over the next decade, and somewhere north of $30,000 between now and retirement (not accounting for inflation). That's a lot of money that could be better spent on more important things: like vacations, massages, beer, or our children’s' education. What’s more, most of that money is paying for subscriptions to channels we don't even watch!!! As you all know, the way cable (and satellite) works is that you pay for a subscription to a package of channels, rather than paying for only the channels you actually want. I took a closer look at our current package to see just what we were paying for. Among the many channels my wife and I have never watched are the following:
4 country music channels (we both hate country music)
8 channels broadcast in Spanish (which I wish I spoke, but sadly do not)
12 channels devoted to a religion with which we are not affiliated
And a whopping 13 shopping channels!!! That’s 13 different channels selling crap I don't want.
Let’s try an analogy. Imagine you walk into a restaurant where you sit down and the waiter hands you a menu. Instead of choosing an appetizer, an entrée, and a dessert, you instead have to choose one of several tiered “packages.” Being frugal, you choose the cheapest one and sit back to await your food. The waiter proceeds to bring you six appetizers, three salads, ten entrées, and four desserts. You can’t eat half the appetizers or entrées because of your shellfish allergy, forego the salad because you hate lettuce, skip the steak and the burger because you don't eat red meat, and don’t eat a single dessert because they all have chocolate (and you hate chocolate). You eat a few bites of the remaining dishes, which you enjoy, and then get a bill that includes the price of every single dish the waiter brought (including the ones you didn't eat). Ridiculous! Right?
But isn’t that what we’ve been putting up with for years from cable (and satellite) providers? Well, I for one have had enough. Between digital antennas—which allow you to get all the networks in high def for free—and streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, and iTunes, you can pretty much watch everything you want to at about a third of the cost. Sure, with services like Netflix and Hulu you still get a bunch of movies and TV shows you don’t want to watch, but they cost pennies compared to cable. It’s more than worth it.
So there you go. We’re cutting the cord, ending a relationship that has lasted nearly as long as our marriage, and saving a bundle in the process. And until à la carte subscription TV becomes available, we will stick with our guns and say, “No thank you, I do not need a channel devoted entirely to golf.” Nothing against golf, but I’d rather watch Telenovela: I might not understand what the people are saying, but at least there’s some action.