Cutting the Cable…..

I’ve been thinking about how much money I send to Verizon, AT&T, COX, NetFlix, etc. every month and their ads on how to save money by bundling their services together.

So if I move my home phone from Verizon to Cox I can save $14/month.  Maybe more, it looks like the “bundle” pricing is less than I’m currently paying 🙁  So the minimum bundle with Cox (intenet, local phone, basic TV) is $68/month compared to my current unbundled cost of $148/month.  Assuming Cox isn’t telling me about the $13 in telco fee’s & taxes that probably get added in, it’s still $67/month lower!

Or maybe move my TV and Internet Access to Verizon, oops FiOS isn’t here yet so it’d be DSL and Direct TV for now… Not going to go to a slower connection.  Too bad, since it’d be nice if I could get a bundle that included the mobile broadband data plan from them.

So, combining services gets me down to $80/month (which I’m not sure I believe since it’s less than my current bill!).  Now what if I dump services instead of just consolidating them?

Why not dump the wired line and only use my cell phone?  Granted no power means no cell phone service, but that’s only if it’s a major power outage.  How about dumping cable?  I’ve got Roku with Netflix and can add Hulu Plus, and for local channels a USB TV Tuner is only $50 to get the local over the air channels.

So if I bump up the Internet Plan for Cox to go from 16 to 24 MBPS and That gets me down to $59/month, saving almost $90/month!

But what did you give up?  no more telemarketers and political pollsters calling and from the entertainment/TV side.  Guess it’s time to try to live without cable news…..