Wanting to cut cable... Suggestions?

AprilZ81 · September 2016

We are currently paying just over $400 a month to AT&T for two cell phones (iPhones, one with unlimited data that DH refuses to give up), cable (no HBO or other "premium" channels) internet and home phone.

The home phone and internet is a requirement of my job since I work from home so I can't get rid of that. I also get a $100 monthly stipend to offset these costs.

Our biggest "need" for cable is live sports. We both watch college football, NFL, NHL and when DH can find the games he will watch MBL (his team is considered out of market even though we live 3 hours away and never get games due to black out rules no matter what we are willing to pay for). Some of these sporting events are on the networks, but not nearly enough to make us comfortable with completely cutting the cord just yet.

I keep hearing that if you buy an Amazon Firestick and load the kodi app onto it you can pretty much watch whatever movie, tv show or sporting event you want. Does anyone have any experience with this or any other suggestions?

We watch a lot of network shows, but we can get those with a Hulu Plus subscription or by streaming them over the channel's website, sports really is the only thing keeping us paying the $130ish we pay for the actual cable portion of our bill.

julieanne912 · September 2016

I'm not super helpful but check into the NHL Center Ice Package. We order that when H is travelling a lot, so he can watch Avalanche games from anywhere. HOWEVER, I think they may black out local games.

We have satellite, but we also use our Apple TV to be able to access Netflix and a bunch of other streaming apps through the Apple TV. Like, we've been watching World Cup of hockey on the ESPN app through Apple TV since the games aren't always on channels we have.

julieanne912 · September 2016

And by the way, sports are the only reason we still have satellite. We could be just fine without the rest of it.

hoffse · September 2016

Check out Sling. You buy the base subscription but can add a sports package for a pretty reasonable amount. We haven't gone to this yet, but it's something I'm trying to get H to look into. I believe Sling is on the firestick and apple TV.

cbee817 · September 2016

We just got the amazon fire stick- DH's parents have it and it works really well. We currently stream netflix and amazon through our wii, but the wii seems to be on its way out (it's probably 10 years old at this point). We'll set up the stick this weekend- I'll have to look into the kodi app. Our cable bill is small (only 23 channels) but to remove that would be great.

jtmh2012 · September 2016

I know this isn't per se "getting rid of cable", but I thought I'd mention it since you said you were on AT&T and your husband wants to keep his unlimited plan. If you switched to DirectTV, AT&T offers unlimited data.

https://www.att.com/shop/wireless/unlimited-plan.html

The other thing you might also want to consider depending on your real data usage is switching to the new plans they came out with in August. You get up to your plan limit in 4G data, and after that it drops to 2G speeds, but no overages.

My wife and I dropped cable years ago right after we got married. She watches mostly Thai streaming TV (she's from Thailand) on her ipad and I pretty much don't watch anything anymore. We have a Netflix subscription, but honestly, the kid watches it more than we do and we could easily drop it.

brij2006 · September 2016

My H likes his sports as well, so ditching satellite was hard for him. Honestly though, he finds that he's realizing sports aren't as important to him now that he can't sit and watch it for hours. He does use a $25/year MLB app to watch the Cubs games. However, we do have an antenna and he can catch the Bears games with that whenever he wants to.

We have the Roku stick in the one room and a PS4 in the other. We stream things through Amazon, Netflix, and YouTube. We did have Hulu for a little bit but cut that and replaced it with Amazon. I also like that with Amazon you can buy episodes. So if we want to watch a newly released show before it will get onto Netflix, then we can purchase either that entire season or just the episodes we want to watch. Still cheaper than satellite.

LillibetteV · September 2016

We've looked into Playstation Vue, Sling, and the a couple of others and for sports it works out to the same as a cable/internet bundle. If we dropped our cable the internet alone was disproportionately expensive and then adding in $25 subscriptions plus sports packages ended up not saving us any money.

Does he really use that much data? My husband was pretty angry when Verizon ended his, but in the end we were able to get him about 8GB a month and it's worked out well.

vlagrl35 · September 2016

I've heard its hard to give up cable if you watch sports. We gave it up 5 years ago and got an HD antenna so we at least get 20ish channels for free.

AprilZ81 · September 2016

LillibetteV said:

We've looked into Playstation Vue, Sling, and the a couple of others and for sports it works out to the same as a cable/internet bundle. If we dropped our cable the internet alone was disproportionately expensive and then adding in $25 subscriptions plus sports packages ended up not saving us any money.

Does he really use that much data? My husband was pretty angry when Verizon ended his, but in the end we were able to get him about 8GB a month and it's worked out well.

He streams radio most of the day at work without wifi. We've looked at cutting his data down, but it only saves about $10 a month and I agree that in that case it isn't worth cutting the plan down.

I work from home and most places we go have wifi now so I have a 2 GB data plan and never come close to going over.

We can afford the cable & cell phone bill, but now that we are combining it to get fewer bills from AT&T the total amount is shocking to me.

jtmh2012 · September 2016

Is there not an alternative to streaming radio? Like a normal one? Or putting the music on the phone and not streaming it?

AprilZ81 · September 2016

jtmh2012 said:

Is there not an alternative to streaming radio? Like a normal one? Or putting the music on the phone and not streaming it?

He works in cubicle land so no radios that others can hear and he listens to talk radio so it isn't something he can download.

Getting rid of his unlimited data package only saves us about $10 a month on the bill so it isn't worth the hassle to us. Cable is a much bigger portion of the bill than his data.

jtmh2012 · September 2016

AprilZ81 said:

jtmh2012 said:

Is there not an alternative to streaming radio? Like a normal one? Or putting the music on the phone and not streaming it?

He works in cubicle land so no radios that others can hear and he listens to talk radio so it isn't something he can download.

Getting rid of his unlimited data package only saves us about $10 a month on the bill so it isn't worth the hassle to us. Cable is a much bigger portion of the bill than his data.

They do make normal radios with headphone jacks.

We're on AT&T and have nowhere near a $400 phone bill for 2 phones, but we only have 2GB of data. Heck, even a XM radio subscription is cheaper....and also has a headphone jack. I mean is it really worth $300/month for him to be able to stream radio vs other options?

AprilZ81 · September 2016

jtmh2012 said:

AprilZ81 said:

jtmh2012 said:

Is there not an alternative to streaming radio? Like a normal one? Or putting the music on the phone and not streaming it?

He works in cubicle land so no radios that others can hear and he listens to talk radio so it isn't something he can download.

Getting rid of his unlimited data package only saves us about $10 a month on the bill so it isn't worth the hassle to us. Cable is a much bigger portion of the bill than his data.

They do make normal radios with headphone jacks.

We're on AT&T and have nowhere near a $400 phone bill for 2 phones, but we only have 2GB of data. Heck, even a XM radio subscription is cheaper....and also has a headphone jack. I mean is it really worth $300/month for him to be able to stream radio vs other options?

Ahh... I see the misunderstanding now. The $400 a month is for two cell phones, cable, internet and a home phone, not just the two cell phone plans.

If our two cell phone bills were $400 there is no freakin' way I would pay it. He would be using an old walkman if he had to.

His cell phone bill alone (with unlimited data) is "only" $100.

jtmh2012 · September 2016

AprilZ81 said:

Ahh... I see the misunderstanding now. The $400 a month is for two cell phones, cable, internet and a home phone, not just the two cell phone plans.

If our two cell phone bills were $400 there is no freakin' way I would pay it. He would be using an old walkman if he had to.

His cell phone bill alone (with unlimited data) is "only" $100.

Yeah, I forgot there were areas that have AT&T for cable. Around here, they're just a phone company unless you get their DirectTV bundle (we don't). $100 is a lot more closer to reasonable.

KAdams767 · September 2016

Not sure how AT&T is for TV, but is it possible to call and negotiate any promotions with them? We have DirectTV and they will always give you some sort of "promotion" to lower your bill if you call them and complain/threaten to cancel. Stuff like $10 off per month for 12 months, or free premium channels, etc. We have a very basic package, probably the lowest they offer, and pay $45/month. We decided awhile ago that up to a certain amount in TV charges was worth it to us, mainly for sports like you said, but it's also nice to have some extra mindless channels sometimes. :-) We only have it in one room, and we have a regular digital antenna in the spare room where I work out, and the free channels here are...not great, LOL.

If it ever increases to over our "threshold" price, we will look at other options, but we figure just going out to watch one game at the bar is almost $50 in food and drinks, so the DirectTV bill is already cheaper than that alternative. Paying for Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hulu, etc. all adds up as well, so for now we are sticking with streamlining and only having one service at a reasonable price.

AprilZ81 · September 2016

KAdams767 said:

Not sure how AT&T is for TV, but is it possible to call and negotiate any promotions with them? We have DirectTV and they will always give you some sort of "promotion" to lower your bill if you call them and complain/threaten to cancel. Stuff like $10 off per month for 12 months, or free premium channels, etc. We have a very basic package, probably the lowest they offer, and pay $45/month. We decided awhile ago that up to a certain amount in TV charges was worth it to us, mainly for sports like you said, but it's also nice to have some extra mindless channels sometimes. :-) We only have it in one room, and we have a regular digital antenna in the spare room where I work out, and the free channels here are...not great, LOL.

If it ever increases to over our "threshold" price, we will look at other options, but we figure just going out to watch one game at the bar is almost $50 in food and drinks, so the DirectTV bill is already cheaper than that alternative. Paying for Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hulu, etc. all adds up as well, so for now we are sticking with streamlining and only having one service at a reasonable price.

In some areas AT&T has a service called U-Verse, which is cable. I call and negotiate frequently, but it is such a hassle to call every 3 or 6 months as a promotion expires. Our latest promotional deal is set to expire so I'll be calling back to see what they can do for us.

I just get sooooooo tired of the promotional pricing game.

short+sassy · September 2016

AprilZ81 said:

KAdams767 said:

Not sure how AT&T is for TV, but is it possible to call and negotiate any promotions with them? We have DirectTV and they will always give you some sort of "promotion" to lower your bill if you call them and complain/threaten to cancel. Stuff like $10 off per month for 12 months, or free premium channels, etc. We have a very basic package, probably the lowest they offer, and pay $45/month. We decided awhile ago that up to a certain amount in TV charges was worth it to us, mainly for sports like you said, but it's also nice to have some extra mindless channels sometimes. :-) We only have it in one room, and we have a regular digital antenna in the spare room where I work out, and the free channels here are...not great, LOL.

If it ever increases to over our "threshold" price, we will look at other options, but we figure just going out to watch one game at the bar is almost $50 in food and drinks, so the DirectTV bill is already cheaper than that alternative. Paying for Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hulu, etc. all adds up as well, so for now we are sticking with streamlining and only having one service at a reasonable price.

In some areas AT&T has a service called U-Verse, which is cable. I call and negotiate frequently, but it is such a hassle to call every 3 or 6 months as a promotion expires. Our latest promotional deal is set to expire so I'll be calling back to see what they can do for us.

I just get sooooooo tired of the promotional pricing game.

AT&T has U-Verse in the suburbs, and some parts of the city, but not my neighborhood. Unless we switched to satellite, which my H is against, cable is all it is and there is only one company (Cox). They are a monopoly. They know it and they act accordingly (ugh).

The problem I've had with other alternatives is I DVR a lot of stuff and I like that medium. Hulu, Netflix, and various streaming choices either don't have the shows I watch or don't keep them long.

Most of the cable portion of my bill, isn't even the cable service itself. It is all the "nickel and diming stuff" like equipment rental. The boxes are a rental. The DVR is a rental. I was reading there is legislation in the works to bar cable companies from forcing consumers to use only their specific equipment. I am waiting for the day.

Wanting to cut cable... Suggestions?

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