Last week I was paying the bills I started paying attention to the details of each bill, especially the individual costs of certain services. One of the bills I looked out particularly was the cable bill. Since we installed cable 3 years ago the bill just seems to go up and up every year.

The more I looked into the cable bill I saw all the taxes and fees associated with having the service. Our base rate for cable, home phone, and Internet was $145.00 per month. After all the taxes, service charges, and fees the total monthly bill was $177.59!

It was totally ridiculous, especially since we moved the tv to the basement once school started and rarely watch the cable! I called my husband who was actually pretty shocked to hear what we were paying for a luxury. We decided to call the cable company to see what our options were.

In the long run we decided to cut the cable service all together. We kept home phone and Internet service and will be paying $63.98 per month after taxes and fees. Just by cutting off the cable we are saving over $100.00 per month!

We have had Netflix for several years and the kids would rather watch Netflix than the cable most of the time. My husband and I looked into Hulu Plus and subscribed to it also for only $7.99 per month. So even with Hulu Plus and Netflix we are still only spending a total of $79.96 per month on cable, Internet, and T.V. We are also looking into an antenna for the T.V. For then we can still get the sports games.

Here is what other options we are using besides cable:

Netflix $7.99 per month
Hulu Plus $7.99 per month
Library to rent movies: FREE and unlimited movies for kids and adults
Red Box: $1.28 per movie after tax. ( we typically rent one kids and one adult movie per month!)

So far we haven’t even missed having cable! We talked about looking into better options / looking for another company, but I honestly doubt we will have cable for several years!