How has your cable cutting experience been?

[Esmerelda]

We dumped cable about 2 years ago. We bought a Firestick and a $12 antenna from Amazon. We also subscribed to Philo which costs us $17 each month. The Firestick gave us access to about 350 channels. Philo got us another 46 I think. Our antenna brought in 24 more channels. So to wrap up, we have about 500 channels for $17. It has been fantastic and a huge money saver.

 

[Tygerlilly]

We cut it about a year ago. Currently we have Hulu Live (for sports and local news channels), Disney+, Noggin for the kids, and I'll be signing up for Discovery+ next month when it becomes available (I'm really excited for this one).

Once football is over I may go ahead and drop Hulu Live down to regular Hulu without ads. I'm not totally sure yet and it will probably depend on what hubby wants to do about it.

Overall, with Hulu Live raising it's prices again, I'm not super sure we are saving money at this point, but I like that I can change what I want when I want without any contracts.

 

[StephMK]

We cut it a few years back but now my goal is to consolidate our streaming. We currently have too many little bills that I want to cut. Spectrum, Netflix, Sling, Hulu, Disney+. Plus I think we probably are paying for some duplicates. My goal for January is to review what we can remove.

 

[RamblingMad]

We cut it a few years back but now my goal is to consolidate our streaming. We currently have too many little bills that I want to cut. Spectrum, Netflix, Sling, Hulu, Disney+. Plus I think we probably are paying for some duplicates. My goal for January is to review what we can remove.

I need to go through this exercise as well. However, with COVID likely impacting me up to the summer, I might keep more than normal until the summer and then start cancelling.

 

[kathy884]

The ATT streaming service now has NBC back. We did, though, to our disappointment miss three or four weeks of our favorite show the Voice by cutting the cord when that went away for a month (unexpected).

 

[disneysteve]

We cut it a few years back but now my goal is to consolidate our streaming. We currently have too many little bills that I want to cut. Spectrum, Netflix, Sling, Hulu, Disney+. Plus I think we probably are paying for some duplicates.

We've now got Sling, Locast, Netflix, and Disney+. That seems to be the combo that will work for us long term. We do also have Prime, though we have that mainly for shipping but we do occasionally watch stuff on there.

 

[disneychrista]

Overall, with Hulu Live raising it's prices again, I'm not super sure we are saving money at this point, but I like that I can change what I want when I want without any contracts.

That is what I don't understand, people cut cable and then add a half-dozen different streaming services. What's the point? My situation was different in that I HAD TO cut expenses so cutting my $90 cable bill to add back $80 in streaming services wasn't an option.

 

[elgerber]

That is what I don't understand, people cut cable and then add a half-dozen different streaming services. What's the point? My situation was different in that I HAD TO cut expenses so cutting my $90 cable bill to add back $80 in streaming services wasn't an option.

In my case we were already paying for Netflix, Prime and Disney + (got a great deal on that) and DD already paid for Hulu. So adding YouTube TV and HBO Max, after dropping Dish, still saved me half what I was paying for Dish.

 

[Tygerlilly]

That is what I don't understand, people cut cable and then add a half-dozen different streaming services. What's the point? My situation was different in that I HAD TO cut expenses so cutting my $90 cable bill to add back $80 in streaming services wasn't an option.

The part I like about it, is if I find we aren't using one, I can stop it immediately. We just cancelled Netflix because we weren't really watching it. I will say, we cut our dish because we were having such bad problems with it cutting out every time it stormed. We live in Oklahoma. It storms a lot in the summer and the last thing I needed was the channel I was watching to keep an eye on a tornado going out as it was approaching. That was a huge facor in the switch.

 

[disneychrista]

In my case we were already paying for Netflix, Prime and Disney + (got a great deal on that) and DD already paid for Hulu. So adding YouTube TV and HBO Max, after dropping Dish, still saved me half what I was paying for Dish.

It is all about what your budget can support and what you are willing to pay for. For some saving half is a great deal for others, like me, every penny of savings was needed.

The part I like about it, is if I find we aren't using one, I can stop it immediately.

I have thought about getting Netflix for a month to watch shows I used to watch on my daughters account before she dropped it. But I haven't had a need. Now that I have discovered IMBD is free on the AmazonPrimeVideo app I just added a bunch more FREE stuff to watch.

 

[msteddom]

That is what I don't understand, people cut cable and then add a half-dozen different streaming services. What's the point? My situation was different in that I HAD TO cut expenses so cutting my $90 cable bill to add back $80 in streaming services wasn't an option.

I think everyone’s situation is different, for me cord cutting was more about not wanting to give any more money than I had to to Spectrum. I have been extremely happy with YTTV, although the last price hike was hard to swallow.

 

[disneysteve]

That is what I don't understand, people cut cable and then add a half-dozen different streaming services. What's the point? My situation was different in that I HAD TO cut expenses so cutting my $90 cable bill to add back $80 in streaming services wasn't an option.

We are saving $105/month by dropping cable and switching to Sling and Locast.

We already had Netflix and Disney+ so those really don't factor into the equation.

 

[disneychrista]

We are saving $105/month by dropping cable and switching to Sling and Locast.

But how much are you still spending?

I was spending about $90/month and am now spending $6. So I am saving $84.

 

[disneysteve]

But how much are you still spending?

Our Comcast bill was $235. It is now $95. We're paying $30 for Sling and $5 for Locast.

So total bill now is $130 vs. the $235 we were paying before.

 

[disneychrista]

Our Comcast bill was $235.

Holy Heck!

 

[disneysteve]

Holy Heck!

Yep. That's why I wanted to cut the cord. I would have done it a long time ago but I had to get my family onboard.

 

[StephMK]

I am definitely reviewing our plans because as mentioned, I want to save from the previous cable bill, not pay the same but in small chunks.

Throwing this out for anyone with students, there are student discounts available. I don't know what ages they all cover but ours uses her college email.

Our daughter has the student discount for Prime. She also has a student discount for Spotify and it comes with free Hulu.

We have Verizon and I'm checking their choose your own unlimited plan. If you bump one line to the $55 plan, it comes with free Hulu/Disney/ESPN.

After reviewing, we are dropping one section of Sling. I'll either sign up for a year of ESPN for $50 or go for the Verizon plan. Either way, what we will save from Sling, will cover the payments for Netflix, Disney, and ESPN.

If we go with Verizon, we will come out farther ahead. I just want to make sure we don't lose anything important if we switch Verizon from the old unlimited plan.

 

[firefly_ris]

I'm spending 79.99 per month for internet and 12.99 per month for the Disney/Hulu/espn bundle. I wish I could get Spectrum to knock down the internet bill but no dice anymore and I have no feasible alternatives.

 

[RamblingMad]

I'm spending 79.99 per month for internet and 12.99 per month for the Disney/Hulu/espn bundle. I wish I could get Spectrum to knock down the internet bill but no dice anymore and I have no feasible alternatives.

This has been the response. If you don't want our cable, we'll charge you more for Internet.

 

[firefly_ris]

This has been the response. If you don't want our cable, we'll charge you more for Internet.

Yep. I haven't had cable since 2006 but it's been pretty sharply rising the last 3 years. And I work from home as a web developer so there's not much I can do about it right now -- I can't just cut it out. There was talk of an alternate provider coming to town at some point (called Greenlight) for some competition but who knows when/if that will happen. Spectrum offered to upgrade me to 400mbps internet for an additional $20/month (the 79.99 is for the standard 100mbps) -- I'm not quite ready to bite that bullet just yet. But I guess at least I'm not limited by monthly data usage or anything like that. But when we moved into the house 8 years ago we were paying 44.99/month for the same internet service.