We finally eliminated cable earlier this year. Cutting the cable cord wasn’t hard due to the fact that we have a digital antenna.
And, guess what?
We haven’t missed it one bit.
According to NPD Group (a market research company), the average monthly cable bill in 2015 is expected to be $123. By the year 2020, the average cable bill is expected to be around $200 a month.
That’s A LOT of money!
In fact, that’s $1,476 for 2015 alone. By 2020, the average annual cable bill would then be $2,400.
Who wants to spend that much money on TV?
I know I don’t!
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I know there are some out there who prefer to have cable because they watch sports, but I doubt that is the norm. I believe many have cable just because it’s an expense that most people have and are “used to.”
However, that money could be used for something else. Perhaps a vacation, retiring a little bit earlier, paying off debt, and so on.
One of the main ways I recommend cutting the cable cord (and making it a bit easier) is by purchasing a digital antenna.
Related money saving tip: You can also ditch cable and get Hulu instead. It’s as low as $5.99 and a great way to save loads of money each month on cable.
Cutting the cable cord is easy with a digital antenna.
When you think of TV antennas, you probably think of the classic rabbit ears that are big and ugly. You probably also think about how the picture is never perfect and how channels can get blurry and almost completely fade away.
Well, these days antennas are no longer like that and this makes cutting the cable cord much easier. Digital antennas are sleek looking and allow you to watch your favorite TV shows with no problem at all.
Digital antennas are also cheap. They start at around $29.99 on the Antennas Direct website and go up from there. There is no monthly cost to use a digital antenna, so you can still receive many of your favorite local TV channels (that’s all I ever watched anyways!) and never have to pay money again.
Just think about it – around $30 for a digital antenna and be set for a really long time, or spend thousands of dollars on cable that you probably don’t get full use out of?
Seems like a clear winner to me!
Related: 16 Alternatives To Cable TV That WILL Save You Money
Our digital antenna.
We recently got a digital antenna (you can go to this website and find many great digital antennas – this is an affiliate link, but I didn’t find out I could be an affiliate until after I was already using their digital antenna. I truly enjoy this product and recommend it!) and it has been working well for us.
We have the ClearStream™ Micron Indoor Multi-Directional Digital TV Antenna.
It’s an indoor one that sits behind our TV, there is no ugliness that goes along with it, and you can’t even see it.
The digital antenna gives us around 14 channels and they are all of great quality. I’ve even heard of others getting 50 or 60 channels. The antenna we bought was around $60 and it will allow us to save hundreds of dollars a year for years to come, so it was a great deal.
Do you have cable? Why or why not?
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We chose to not have cable, as it’s crazy expensive, and we can find plenty of shows we like on my friend’s Netflix and Hulu accounts 😉 We stream OSU Buckeye and Miami Dolphins games online or visit a local bar. I used to practically never watch TV, and I’m hoping to reduce my hours on Netflix soon :/ It’s something cheap to do while we’re both in school and working full-time (and part-time, with our side gigs, of course!)…
Awesome!
Yes I have cable because I really enjoy watching TV.
No problem at all with that 🙂
I do have cable and I hate paying their high prices.
Have you thought about canceling?
We don’t have cable and if we want to watch anything we typically use Hulu or Netflix!
Awesome Kassie!
No cable – we are content with watching our shows via Netflix. Thanks!
I love Netflix!
No, I don’t have cable, I watch TV online. It’s so much easier.
Yes, I have cable, mainly because I just always have and enjoy the different channels available.
Our TV broke so we quit cable and only have internet and phone
Honestly I never had cable and I didn’t missed it once in my life, last year I was talking with a collegue of mine that has cable that is used a lot from her hubby for soccer games, but she said “on wed there isn nothing interesting on tv” and I replied “and you paying cable for this”, normal tv offers great variety of shows plus also internet now is offering a lot of things!!! So I think that eliminating it from your bills is been a great choiche!!!
I have cable because every time it rained when I had a dish, it lost reception.
We still have cable but not for long…
we have Verizon fios to bundle telephone, tv, and internet
Yes…I still have cable, and I hate Comcast! I pay more for cable than my electric bill.
I have Directv. We live in the country and have no signal for regular TV.
Yes, I have cable because I didn’t know about these digital antennas and that I didn’t have to have cable in order to get and be able to watch prime time channels.