You Pinspire Me
I have never paid for cable or satellite, in all my adult life. For our first year of marriage, we chose not to have TV. In subsequent years, we managed to rent and borrow enough movies and DVDs, while spending our money on important things like student loans and house down payments. For about one year, we even had “free” cable, when Bell forgot to disconnect our TV from the previous owner (they never sent us a bill, so we didn’t feel bad enjoying it!).
Cable or satellite will add, at the very least, about $25 to your bill each month, and much more if you order the premium packages. Here are a few tips we’ve learned over the years to help us survive without cable or satellite.
1. Netflix
This is our number one way to save money for TV and movies. If you haven’t used it before, head over to their website to check it out. Basically, you pay $8 a month for unlimited access to their movies and TV shows. They have entire series of older shows and newer ones, including some Netflix original series. The best part about this is that there are no commercials. At all. So a one hour show takes only 43 minutes to watch, and a 30 minute show is done in 20! It is so much fun to discover new shows (like The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt), or re-watch other shows right from the beginning (like Grey’s Anatomy). You can also create a list of shows and movies that you’d like to watch, so you don’t forget what they are.
2. Library
Our library, over the past 10 years, has consistently had an amazing selection of newly-released movies, as well as complete series of DVD of TV shows. You may have to put your name on a list and wait for a while, but it’s free! They have some great shows that Netflix didn’t have at the time (Lost and 24, and other similar shows). Check out your local library’s website for more info.
3. Friends
If you have a friend (or in my case, a brother-in-law) who loves to buy and collect movies and shows, ask to borrow some. They’re usually pretty open to that, as long as you take good car of them, and return the favour with your own DVDs.
4. Antennae (or “Bunny Ears”)
I recently purchased a small wall-mounted antenna at the dollar store, and was amazed at the number of digital channels we were able to get! We got about 3 or 4 local Canadian channels, and about 10 American ones. The digital quality on the channels is pretty impressive, when they come in clearly. If you have a roof-mounted antenna, it should still give you a few channels also. This is how my husband catches any live sports that he wants to watch (like hockey and football).
5. TV Online
There are a large variety of ways to watch shows online, both legally and illegally. I am going to discuss what we currently do, and leave the rest up to you and your choices. If I do end up watching current TV shows, such as Grey’s Anatomy, and The Amazing Race, I have to be just a little patient. CTV.ca will show them a day after they have aired, and they will only be available for about a week or so. I think it works similarly for channels like Global and CityTV. So you have to be on the ball, and remember what days you can watch them by.
If you add up the amount you save every month by not paying for TV, it ends up being a pretty impressive amount!
Do you pay for your TV? Do you have any other suggestions for how to live without cable or satellite?
Marya R
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This is great! We had Comcast and now DirectTv and it’s so ridiculous how much we pay and there is never anything on when we try to sit down and watch tv. Which we barely do. Way too pricey!
There are so many other, less expensive options out there than satellite or cable! We reduce our cable bill during the summer months as we are outside so much more and not watching tv.
We had satellite for a number of years mainly due to our living arrangements. We rent a suite from my father in-law and he paid for it while we paid for the internet. We now have a roof mounted antenna and there’s a good selection of channels. There’s a few specialty channels that we miss, but for the most part it’s working out great. I don’t think I would go back to satellite or cable.
We do have a Time Warner Cable and we loved it especially the sports. Right now The Masters are on and my husband and my son enjoy the golf. We also love to watch hockey and football I am great with books. I also borrow movies from the library.
It is funny to thank that I grew up without cable. I turned out okay.
Sounds like a fun and interesting post indeed! My husband loves to watch WWE & few other sports using cable. But luckily in my local area the cable people offers many discounts during the summer time and for special vacations as well. So, we don’t think much about cable expenses much.
We do the same thing. Netflix and hulu and watching online. HDMI cable hooks from our laptop to the TV 🙂
I remember when they switched from analog to digital channels and my rabbit ears no longer worked. I got a free converter box and still nothing. I happily pay for cable because I will never forget being without my MTV when I was in college and spent hours adjusting those antennas!
We havent’ ever had cab;e- just online providers like Netflix and Hulu… works great! BUT, I would love access to local channels- so I also have a crazy antenna think that looks like a mouse pad on my wall!
We use the library and Netflix! Love not having a cable bill!
I like all of those ideas!
Thank you 🙂
We have netflix too and LOVE it! We rarely use our cable, so are thinking about cutting it! It will definitely save a lot of money!
Through Roku, we’ve been cable and satellite free for a couple of years. Last weekend we purchased an OTT box…one time free with NO monthly fees. We can watch BRAND new movies, ANY movie or TV show from the past 50 years…and yes, it’s legal!
through live streaming online we can watch tv shows and movies . . .