13 March 2008 No Comment Print This Post  Email This Post

My boyfriend and I have been considering getting rid of cable for our television. There are a couple of reasons: we’d like to save money and we don’t like the thought of how much time we wind up spending in front of the television (despite only officially watching 2 shows) being two of the key issues.

Cable TV is a bit of a misnomer, of course — we receive our extra television channels as part of a package deal for Verizon FiOS. High speed internet is must for us — I work from home and can’t afford to not have it. When we signed up for the internet installation, Verizon was offering a package deal of cable, internet and phone for a relatively low price. A fax line does make my work easier, so we decided to go with the package deal. That was almost a year ago.

While I like having options for entertainment, though, I’ve realized that cable isn’t that big of a deal for me. I like movies (which I get through Netflix On Demand, more often than not) and television shows on network TV. So, we’ve been investigating our options.

To change our Verizon contract will be about $200, which will essentially pay for itself after two months — assuming we get rid of both cable and my fax line. We might step up our Netflix account a notch and set up an account with an online fax service (of which there are hundreds, most of which are under $15 a month), but we’re still talking about less than half the price of our current plan.

We’re holding off, though, for something that I admit is probably not the best of reasons. Our favorite television show is about to start up again and it isn’t on network TV. And, considering that this is the last season, we want to watch it as each episode comes out, rather than waiting. We’re placing our personal enjoyment over our frugality. I’m okay with it too — frugality isn’t about making yourself miserable, after all. I’ve seen a lot of people cut out every bit of entertainment from their budget when they’re trying to get control on their finances, and I think that sort of austerity makes it easier for a budget to fail. We have to have a little bit of fun, or what’s the point of saving money at all? Keeping cable for the next few months won’t break the bank, after all.

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