This year will mark five years since my wife and I took the jump and became cord cutters. So I wanted to take a moment to dive into why I became a cord cutter and what I have learned over the last five years.
I also made a video telling my story:
First, Why I Became a Cord Cutter
About five years ago my wife and I sat down to go over our bills. We had some credit card debt and a car payment we really wanted to pay off, so we decided to see what we could do to pay them off as quickly as possible.
We started by looking at cutting down on eating out, cutting back on spending, and other ways to save money, but we quickly realized our DIRECTV bill was the biggest way we could quickly save money on our monthly bills.
At the time we paid over $112 a month just for TV. (We had DSL Internet that was separate from DIRECTV.) We also already had Netflix and Amazon Prime on top of the DIRECTV subscription. So not only did we pay $1,344 a year to DIRECTV, we also paid $99 to Amazon and $108 to Netflix (under the old pricing) for a grand total of $1,551 a year.
What made it even more painful is we quickly realized that we rarely watched shows live and typically watched them a few days later on our DVR.
So after some looking around, I found out most of the shows we watched could be found on Hulu for an extra $8 a month. For the two shows we wanted not on Hulu we discovered we could pay about $20 a year to watch them.
I found a used Roku HD on eBay for the bedroom and used our PS3 in our living room to stream. (We replaced the PS3 with a Roku 2 a few months later.)
That was a huge savings! However, this was back when cord cutting was not as easy as it is today. Five years ago there was no Sling TV, PlayStation Vue, etc. Becoming a cord cutter meant giving up access to cable channels.
Now cord cutting is so much easier for new and old cord cutters.
First, before I tell you what I use now for home use let me remind you that for work in the office I have every streaming player from Roku made in the last five years and every version of the Fire TV, Chromecast, Nvidia Shield, and the Apple TV 4th Generation along with every live TV streaming service, and I have tried many other streaming services.
Here Is What I Use Now
Amazon Prime (great for shipping and the videos/music are a huge bonus)
In the past for college football season, I used Sling TV or PlayStation Vue. This year I still have the Go Big deal from DIRECTV NOW so I may try that.
Add in an antenna and my Tablo DVR and you have my cord cutting setup.
To watch TV I recently upgraded to the new TCL Roku TVs for the bedroom and living room. I love having everything built in with no wires.
I still save a ton of money. From having to have a two-year contract to pay $112 a month I now pay $25 to $35 a month six months a year for a live TV streaming service. The best part is I get all the same sports channels I would with cable TV.
So that is how I became a cord cutter and what I currently use. If you want to see how much money I save, you can find a full breakdown of it HERE.
What is your cord cutting story? Leave us a comment and let us know.
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