Cutting the Cord

Welcome to my first blog post. A lot of people have been asking me how I cut the cable cord, how it works and what I bought. So over the next few days I'll detail all that I did in as much detail as I can (probably too much).  First some background...

It started one day when I was trying to get my Cox Cable bills setup through electronic bill pay through my bank.  My Cox Telephone has always been separate from the cable and internet bill.  So as I was doing this, I added both Cox Cable bills together and the number surprised me (it shouldn't have but it did).  I was paying Cox Communications $235 per month!  That's $2,820 per year, $33,840 since I've been in the house (over 12 years)!!   This assumes I don't make any long distance calls, use any OnDemand or Pay-Per-View services.  Other ways to look at it:

• At $2,820/year, that's a free new car every ten years - a nice one!
• At $2,820/year, that's equivalent to over $4,000 of my gross annual salary
• Paying off my mortgage in 15 years instead of 30
• A nice vacation or two each year
• Put that amount of money into a college fund and one of our kids would go to college for free (at least a year or two)

Here is the breakdown of what I was paying for each month:

• Phone $45
• Internet $64
• Cable $137
• Cox Bundle discount $11 (golly gee thanks!)

What the hell was I thinking?!?!  The cable television is what irked me the most.  I only watched one or two shows regularly and the rest of the time I only watched movies I had already seen just before bed as a way to relax.  My wife watched Food Network, TBS and a few other shows while she did other things.  My kids watched the most of course - Cartoon Network, Boomerang and Disney - over and over and over. All total we only watch 5-6 channels even though we were paying for over 200.  As an added bonus I knew subsidizing ESPN, The Golf Network and many others for everyone else!

As I looked into it I discovered that according to Tivo:

"88% of the TV shows everyone records is available for free"

As a geek, I am used to (sadly often do) research topics into mind-numbing detail.  Plus, I knew there were some easy alternatives to all that I was paying for.  In my next post I'll layout the plan that I came up with.