We Turned Off Our Cable for the Summer & Now Have No Plans of Turning it Back On

Have you ever had a happy accident?

Disconnecting our cable was not initially in the plan, but ATT & Comcast didn’t want to cooperate, so we decided to keep our money in our pockets.

Our cable & internet were originally bundled together with AT&T, when our contract was due to end in June. Usually, the first year is a deal you can’t refuse (that’s how they suck you in), then it triples on year 2.

When our AT&T contract was nearing the end, we decided to leave AT&T and go with Comcast. This time, Comcast had a great deal, but the phrase “you get what you pay for” quickly comes to mind.

Quickly, what happened….

Comcast didn’t initially come when they said they would, and I took off work to meet them! After we called to remind them, they wanted to reschedule for 10 days later! 10 DAYS WITHOUT CABLE AND INTERNET? We then received our first bill, which was for something we didn’t order. My husband tried to cancel, but we learned that it really wasn’t cancelled. We also found out they had an incorrect name for him, and wouldn’t change it. We had to pay a deposit because they couldn’t find our address (WHAT!). In the end, we received the deposit back and finally decided to go back to AT&T for internet.

We decided to forgo cable since school was out and the kids would be in camp, but UNFORTUNATELY WE COULD NOT LIVE WITHOUT INTERNET. We had already been without it for 3 weeks and who knew how much the internet was apart of our everyday lives?

We ended up with AT&T for internet and let the kids know that Disney, Nick, & more would not be returning for the summer. I think I remember seeing tears roll down my daughters face.

HOW DID WE LIVE WITHOUT CABLE:

• We lived! Over the summer, my kids enjoyed camp and on the weekends they rented movies. Luckily this was a great summer, and riding bikes with the kids when I got off work became a normal occurrence.
• Rented movies: Redbox saw us a lot over the summer, but the cost didn’t come close to the cable bill we had with 3 boxes. My husband is Mr. Coupon, so most of the time we had a BOGO movie anyway. ($1.20 for two)
• Antenna: Someone told my husband about ‘bunny ears’, which is basically an antenna that you plug in to your television and allowed us to get all of the local channels. This is great because, we can still see the local news and what’s going on in the world. Fortunately for me, most of my shows are on ABC, so I won’t miss Scandal!

WHY DID WE DECIDE NOT TO TURN IT BACK ON

Well, June and July came and went, and now school was starting. It’s now January and we still do not have cable. We decided that we are doing just fine without it and we like keeping our coins.

With the antenna, we see all the local channels and for the remainder of the shows we can’t see on TV, we catch on YouTube, Online and Netflix.

We recently purchased a Samsung Blue-ray BD-F5900 Disc Player that allows us to stream anything from our tablets, Netflix, Hulu, all the kids programming and a range of other things on our TV. So we really don’t feel like we are missing out on anything anymore.

WHAT DO WE MISS?

My husband misses ESPN. I miss CNN & OWN. I can go on CNN.com anytime, but it’s not the same. CNN to me, was like ESPN to my husband. That was the channel my TV stayed on, because I love knowing what’s going on in the world.

As far as OWN, I miss Oprah! She doesn’t allow her material to be shown online at all sooooooo, I got halfway into The Have & Have Nots and will never know what happened to her son that was in the coma! Also, I miss my Lifeclasses and Super Soul Sunday.

Although we miss those 3 networks, it’s not worth $80 a month to get them back.

Oh! I miss DVR!

WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO GOING FORWARD:

We have recently purchased Netflix and still deciding on Hulu. Both of those together would be around $20 a month, and still cheaper than our cable bill. Then the kids will be able to watch what they want, when we allow them to versus crying about missing a show at a certain time.

I’ve even did Facebook polls on Apple TV, Roku & Google Chrome. The jury is still out on those. Right now, it has become our new normal so we’re ok.

WHAT’S WEIRD

The only negative about not having cable is when we have considered having a baby sitter come over. I’ve said to my husband, “What are they going to watch?” My husband’s response is, “They are here to watch our children, not tv!”

Although he is correct, it’s still seems wrong!

Do you still have cable? Have you ever considered turning it off? 

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