Cutting The Cord: Minimize Without Eliminating Television Viewing Options

Simple living does not mean sacrificing things you truly enjoy. It means paying attention to the place those things serve in your life and making sure you are making the best choices for the cost and use of the things that are important to you.

If you are not ready to completely give up television watching but would love to reduce expenses in that area, Roku may be for you (please note that I am not an affiliate of Roku). There are lots of options in the Roku family. Their web site does a good job explaining the service and the options. We opted to go with last year's model to save a few dollars. It is new and never used and was purchased from ebay for $80. This is a one time expense.

Before Roku, our services were through our local cable provider. We had one of those deals where the internet service, cable television service, and a phone land line are provided for one price. It wasn't so bad when we had the deal but once that ended, our monthly bill for those three services went up to $172 per month.

The only service we want to keep from our cable provider is internet service. With just this single service, our monthly cost is estimated to be $60. With Roku, there are a number of services that stream for free but to get cable channels, there is a monthly fee. The monthly fee is offered at three levels: $20, $25, or $40. We are opting to start with the lowest package for a few months. I am hoping it will be enough. If there are channels that we really miss, we can always add them later.

Making this change will save our family around $90 per month. Even though there is a one time charge for the Roku unit, it will be recovered in the first month of use. The only thing we are giving up completely is the land line, and I never wanted that anyway.

If I sound a little wishy washy on the costs per month, it is only because we just made the switch this week and I am waiting to receive bills to confirm that what I expect to be charged is what actually is charged. I will update this post if there are any surprises.

To summarize...

BEFORE

Cable TV = $94

Internet = $56

Land line = $22

TOTAL = $172

AFTER

Internet = $60

Streaming TV = $20

TOTAL = $80

*** SAVINGS PER MONTH = $92 ***

ONE TIME FEE FOR EQUIPMENT = $80

We will reduce our expenses by more than $1000 per year by making this change. That means we can save more or work less or put that money toward other, more valuable experiences. 

Simple living is something we are embracing one step at a time. Today it is reducing a monthly expense. Yesterday, it was removing unneeded stuff from our home. I can't wait to see what tomorrow brings.