The Mr. and I made a conscious decision when we got married to not get cable television. To be honest, I hadn’t had cable TV since I was living in the dorms in college and what I realized was that I wasted a lot of time in front of the “boob-tube”. I would stare at it for hours allowing my brain cells to slowly deteriorate as I learned about the “Real World” or how desperate some housewives are.
When I first decided I didn’t need cable I was living on my own in a new town in a small apartment above a shop downtown. (None of that was really relevant as to why I didn’t get cable. I just wanted to give you some idea of where I lived.) I was living on an intern’s salary and couldn’t afford anything more than food, gas, and rent. The decision to not get cable was basically decided for me.
After that year I realized how easy it was to not have it. I didn’t miss TV. I watched movies when I needed background sound. I used the internet (which I have not paid to use in almost 4 years) when I needed to find out the weather or local news. Yes, it left me slightly out of touch but I talked to people everyday so I could get the jist of what was going on in the world. (It doesn’t help that I couldn’t even get local programming because I didn’t have rabbit-ears for my TV. Yes, I was that cheap…and still am.)
It wasn’t until we moved back here that we finally got a converter box for our TV (free, might I add from my parents who had no need for it any longer. Yes, I am this cheap.) My parents couldn’t stand that we could check local weather or news so my mom actually came and hooked it up because it sat at our apartment for a few weeks unopened. (I told you we don’t watch that much TV.)
Now I have come to realize that I hope to never have cable in my house. It is a time waster and trust me, I can waste my time doing a lot of other things. We have compensated a bit for our lack of current events in entertainment television by getting a subscription to Netflix. We can get two movies (or TV series) at a time and send them in and get more as many times as we want a month. And it within our budget at $15.00/month.
We also depend heavily on the library for free movie (and TV series) rentals and watch hulu.com for free online TV viewing, along with watching networks like CBS who offer their shows online for a limited time.
So, we still watch TV and movies but for the most part, we just don’t pay for it. We are cheap young adults with better things to spend our hard earned cash on. (Like a car payment from a recent car purchase.) We believe that a part of being sustainable is being money conscious. We need to watch our cash flow and budget ourselves to not get in over our heads.
Do you have cable? Why or why not? What other ways do you save money?
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