Our Thoughts One Month After Canceling Cable

During a “Slice of Life” post last month, I briefly mentioned that we finally canceled our DirecTV cable account after our bill went up again, and you all had a lot to say! Apparently many of you also canceled cable or are considering it, so this was a hot topic in the comments section of this blog and social media. In hindsight, I should have brought up this discussion when we were in the “debating what to do” stage because you all suggested options we’d never even heard of!

We’ve been without regular cable for a little over a month, so I wanted to follow up with our thoughts after adjusting to our new ways of watching television. Just to catch you up, we now solely have Netflix and Playstation Vue.

Even though I claimed to never watch TV, I actually watched it way more than I realized.

I had a bunch of shows DVRed, like Dr. Phil and Live with Kelly, that I didn’t watch every day but would enjoy flipping on when I had an hour and just wanted to relax with mindless television. During our first few weeks without cable, I definitely missed having the ability to turn on some of these shows in the background like I used to. I was beginning to think that maybe we made a mistake, but a month later I don’t miss those shows at all.

I feel really out of the loop with current events, but that’s not a bad thing.

For three years I turned on Good Morning America almost every single morning and World News at night. I enjoyed keeping up with the election and other current events. Everyone that knows me personally knows that I’m a big news junkie (I always dreamed of being a news anchor). Shortly after the election I started feeling really bogged down by all of the negativity and bias in the media, and I was surprised at how annoyed I felt. I stopped turning on these shows as often, and I found myself more available to do other things in the mornings and evenings. This was “good practice” leading up to our break up with cable because now I can’t watch these shows live anymore. I feel so much more out of the loop than I used to about current events, but I also feel somewhat happier. I wouldn’t say that this is me sticking my head in the sand and ignoring important issues; I’m just a very emotional person when I see so much hardship and heartache that people are experiencing, so I’m personally better off not walking around feeling depressed from the news every day. 😉

We’re enjoying paying a lower bill.

We’re paying $76 less per month for our TV “needs”, and we are happy to allot those savings to other areas of our monthly budget.

We’re watching more shows and movies together.

We used to have our own individual shows that we’d DVR and catch up on at night, but now we’re immensely enjoying finding something new to watch together. We recently finished 13 Reasons Why, and while I didn’t love the last episode, I did look forward to hanging with Jamie every night for a week and watching an episode or two.

We only watch TV in the living room now.

For some reason, it didn’t dawn on either of us that our TV in our bedroom and our basement would no longer be functional. This hasn’t been a problem since we rarely watched TV in those rooms anyway, but it was initially strange thinking about how that wasn’t an option anymore. I used to flip the TV on frequently for background noise while I folded laundry in my bedroom, but now I just call a girlfriend and get through the chore that never, ever ends. 🙂

Final thoughts…

If money were no option, we would get cable back. It’s much more convenient and the adjustment to no cable has been surprisingly tougher than I expected. I’ve had cable my entire life, so this was a big switch to our entertainment around the house. We just didn’t watch TV enough to make spending that extra $76/month worth it.  Now that we’re adjusted, I’m not sure we’ll ever go back.

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