we each have cell phones AND a home phone
We have basic cable, and Internet. - TIME WARNER
Costs around $200 - $230 a month for the above.
I wonder if we cut the home phone, or make incoming calls only, cut the cable, keep netflix perhaps at $8 a month. Keep internet..
If that would work out cheaper... We hardly watch TV, but this winter, what is there to do? DVD's might be a good choice... the $1 redbox is very limited...
I wonder if TW will up the price of the internet if I take away the phone and Cable? (That means no dvr!!) Can you buy a dvr or something like that? What about all the HD channels, will I loose those?
Just wondering... Will save us an arm and a leg if we could do that.... what is the best option here?
Cut the cable, watch TV shows on the internet, get pre-paid cell phones & a Vonage home phone. You will save a ton of money, if you are willing to sacrifice a little.
This is what we did. Netflix, no home phone, no tv. We got used to it. It is just a different way of thinking. We watch whole seasons of shows and then watch tv shows we like on the Internet. You don't need a DVR. The only downside is no sports... But it works for us. It does save us money...
Good luck!
We have an HD antennae that was only $60. We get quite a few channels on top of all the local channels. We don't watch t.v. much so we haven't tried netflix yet. I have heard there's lots of free t.v. and movies on hulu. And a friend of mine has a tivo (sp?)
When we cancelled cable our internet went up $10 mo, so now it's $39.
We have cell phones that run us $80 a month. My husbands job requires us to have a land line, so we have vonage at $32 mo.
We have lots to do around the house and our kids keep us busy with games & what not. We don't miss cable at all.
I am a cable news junkie, so I got a podcast subscription which was extremely cheap for 1 year.
We cut our TV and got a good antennae that mouned to the roof - we still get HD channels for network TV. You might lose your HD, but is it worth $100 or so a month? You can watch SO many shows on the network websites the day after they are aired. Many cable channels also have their shows online. Totally worth it.
Also, we bought an Ooma on Clark Howard's recommendation. It is a VOIP for home, and you can port your home number to it. The inital unit is $200, but then you only pay taxes each month - about $3.50/month for us. The quality isn't perfect all the time, but it's totally worth not having a phone bill. Read the reviews, good and bad, on Amazon to get an idea of its pros and cons.
Even with increasing our internet speed to make up for the phone and extra streaming we are still saving around $125/month by doing just those 2 things. Also, we use prepaid cell phones and still spend way less on phones per month than most people. You can do it if you look!
We have netflex. We gave up TV years ago. We dont' watch it enough to justify the cost. Instead, we saved our money and bought a giant gorgeous new TV and a playstation.
We play outside in the winter, and/or do lots of family video's with popcorn. Board games are good too.
We cut our house phone almost 2 years ago. But we have cell phones (iphones), internet (I go to school online), DirecTV, etc.
We cut in other places, like not going out so much...making one package of chicken for 5 people and cutting it up before we plate it so it's really enough.
Some things we need, and some things we don't. Some things that we like we keep, and others we do without.
It's really up to you and your families needs :).
We have Time Warner bundle for our home phone, HD DVR cable and internet I think it is about $150/mo. We got the DVR free for 6 months our HD channels are free ( there is the $10/mo rental for ther HD box- this is standard). We cut out channels that we don't use like HBO, Showtime, Starz ect as well as all the sports packages. We got to lock in our rate for 2 years and when that expired we just called and told them that we were thinking of changing service providers due to the increased cost. That is when they gave us the DVR free and gave us a better rate for the bundle. Try calling them and seeing what they can offer you they will want to keep you as a customer and might be able to offer to free channel packages or the DVR free ect it never hurts to ask. You have to have the HD box in order to get the HD channels. If you drop the cable yes you will loose the HD channels. You can buy a TEVO for the DVR but I think you have to pay a monthy subscription fee for that and I don't know what that runs.
We have zero cable, only the $8 netflix streaming through our xbobx. Xbox live is only about $50 an entire year to make that possible. We love watching old seasons of The Office and tons more, including lots of movies. We have basic cell phones (we even turned texting off to save $30 a month), no landlinephone and basic internet. So yeah, we save a lot doing that and it doesn't hurt either.
As for the hd channels, we have a blu ray player and an hd tv, so we watch redbox blu ray movies and the picture is awesome. We also don't stay on top of current tv shows so having cable isn't even worth it to us, but if we did want to watch a current season of say, The Office, we could do hulu for about $9 or so a month.
