We disconnected our cable and are happy with…

Since the beginning of the year my husband and I have been talking about lowering our $190 a month bundled bill of cable, internet, and phone.  We had always been under the impression that if you bundle everything together you would actually save money.  I had never asked if they would do an ala carte option, but our $190 a month still seemed like a lot of money.  When I calculated it out, it was $2280 a year.  I have clients who book their vacations for that amount of money!

I sat down one day and did a system check.  Since starting my business, I have learned that you have to do system checks to see where your wasting time, energy, and money.  Once you determine where that is you find a system that works to fix them all.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t always work that way in life, but with cable, phone, and internet it did.  I realized that we only had a land line for our security system.  We never used it otherwise, and would get unwanted phone calls at 9 o’clock at night when we were putting the kids to bed.  That was easy to get rid of.

Pixabay Photo

Next, I noticed that my children didn’t watch much television.  The shows they watched were also available on Netfilx and Hulu.  They preferred watching it on Netflix and Hulu because they didn’t have commercials.  I had to ask myself, what did I watch and what did my husband watch?  When we sat down and determined which shows we would miss it was just two shows.  We both decided we could give up those shows.  Football for my husband though is a must.  This was the one thing I figured would be the reason to keep cable, but to my surprise, my husband said he watches it more on his phone.  Getting rid of cable was a lot easier than I thought it would be.  

Of course, we can’t live without internet so I knew we were going to have to keep that.  We dropped the land line and cable about four months ago now.  The kids love Netflix, Hulu, and our Roku.  We also have Amazon Prime so there are multiple kids shows on there they really enjoy.  I downloaded applications for their tablets like PBS apps, and they still enjoy their kids YouTube videos.  Hours of fun watching other people open toys on the internet.

The past couple of months our bill has dropped to close to $100 per month for all five services including internet.  As a family, we are finding new shows to watch with each other, and when we aren’t watching shows the kids are playing more with their toys.  I have to say that this family is happy and enjoying life more without a bundle. 

If you are thinking of removing cable from your home you may want to consider asking yourself and your family a few questions.

    • What shows do they watch and will they miss them?
    • Are those shows available on another device or application at a lower cost? 
    • How often does the family actually get to watch cable? 

The truth is, if you get rid of it and then decided that you like it, you can always get it re-connected. 

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Mary Yohannan
Mary Yohannan lives in the Baldwin-Whitehall area of Pittsburgh. She moved to Pittsburgh over 2 years ago with her husband and 2 beautiful children. Mary owns her own travel agency Life is Better Traveling™, LLC which has helped hundreds of families take amazing vacations to Disney®, the Caribbean, Hawaii, Alaska, and all over Europe. She is also the founder of the Travel Agent School Supporting Learning and Education™ or T.A.S.S.L.E, which has the How to Become a SUCCESSFUL Travel Agent program™, a one-stop, all-inclusive program for someone who wants to become a Successful Travel Agent. Mary earned the distinguished honor of the Certified Travel Associate (CTA) through the Travel Institute in 2016, and has several other travel and tourism certifications. Mary has traveled to over 20 countries on 3 continents, but it wasn’t until she had children did she learn that traveling with little ones is a completely different, and sometimes challenging, traveling experience. Mary’s authentic passion for travel and traveling with her children has given her extensive knowledge on the best tips, tricks, and hacks to keep kids calm, entertained, and well-behaved while traveling. She posts a variety of travel tips and tricks on her highly coveted, High Content Life is Better Traveling website, but she has a lot of great advice on traveling with kids that she can’t wait to share with all those amazing Pittsburgh Moms.