Don’t you love when you make a life change for one reason, and realize that it benefits you in countless other ways? That’s kind of how we feel about canceling our cable. We made the decision to shut it off to save money. We were paying $70 a month for a service that we barely ever used. But after two weeks without cable, we’ve discovered a long list of other ways it’s improved our lives.
We have more time.
Now that we’re not wasting time watching junk on TV, we have more time to pursue other hobbies like blogging, reading, and listening to music. We still watch our favorite shows online at Hulu or on network websites, but we’re more purposeful about what we watch now. Plus we don’t spend countless hours zoned out while channel surfing and looking for something good when there’s really nothing on.
We’re more active.
I used to spend the evening parked on the couch on nights when Tony was in class late. Last week, when Tony was on campus and I was bored at home in the evening, I headed to the gym for my second workout of the day. On the weekends, we’re more likely to get up and get out of the house instead of zoning out in front of the Food Network.
Our house is filled with music again.
We used to keep the TV on in the background all the time, but only now that it’s gone have I realized how distracting and annoying it could be. Now when we’re writing or spending a quiet evening together, we play our favorite music in the background. It’s much more relaxing.
We’re branching out and watching new things.
It’s ironic, but only now that we’ve stopped channel surfing and feeling obligated to watch our expensive cable have we started getting into new TV shows. We rent TV shows on DVD from Netflix that we’ve always wanted to watch, like “How I Met Your Mother” and “Lost.” Our Netflix plan is only $8.99 a month for unlimited DVDs (only one at a time), but this is plenty to discover new shows and movies that we never had time to watch before.
Life without cable isn’t for everyone, but if you’ve been considering it, I say give it a shot! We still get to watch our favorite shows online for free, so canceling cable has been nothing but positive! Plus, we’re putting that $70 to better use!
We also just got hooked on “How I Met Your Mother” through Netfllix and it’s GREAT. And of course, watching on Netflix dvds instead of the TV cuts out the gluttony of advertising while making the show’s running time shorter. Win-win.
.-= FrugalChick´s last blog ..September in review =-.
I had planned on canceling our cable on the 18th because that’s the day my husband was supposed to deploy. There were maintenance problems with the ship that delayed it. Then we ended up going home on emergency leave and the ship left while we were gone. So now we have no idea when he’s going to be leaving. I told him the cable is getting canceled on the 7th whether he’s here or not. Canceling it will save us $90 a month.
.-= Sabrina´s last blog ..Bleh. =-.
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