We Cut Cable and Here’s What Happened

Some people pack up their belongings and move into a tiny home. Others RV it across the country or live off the land. My family’s attempt at embracing a minimalist lifestyle is a little more… well… minor. But we did cut cable.

Now I get it, cutting cable is not all that revolutionary of a move. It’s not like if we cut cable television in 2018 we would be out in the backyard churning butter. There’s Netflix, Amazon, antennas, and some very smart phones. Honestly, considering our screen habits we weren’t expecting a whole lot to change at all. But we did notice three things since we cut the cord.

This post contains affiliate links.  As an affiliate, I earn a commission on qualifying purchases 

The Three Things We Noticed After We Cut Cable

1) The Kids are Alright

Before making the cut, we ordered an HD tv antenna from Amazon to make sure we could still get some of the basic channels for football and This Is Us watching purposes. Then after many phone calls to my friends at our friendly yet aggressive cable television provider, I finally got our cable box whisked away and we became an internet-only customer.

The first thing I noticed was that the kids do not care. Not a bit. They still had their Disney movie suite on Amazon Prime Video and Sofia the First on Netflix.

The only hiccup so far was that Jack was confused when I couldn’t pause a live football game so he could go get a snack. The kitchen is ten feet away so he just made a run for it during a commercial. He didn’t miss a single Tom Brady play. Or LeBron. You try to tell him that LeBron doesn’t play for the Patriots, or play football. Try it…

2) We Started Making It Rain

If you have one child in daycare, you understand that it’s expensive. If you have more than one child in daycare, then you have more than once googled “how to print money at home.” My kids are in wonderful care while we are at work during the day. Fabulous care. But dang, it costs A LOT of money.

So we started looking for ways to make more money or cut costs. First came the groceries. Then when we found that our cable plan had hundreds of channels that we never watched anymore and a DVR that was filled with episodes of “So You Think You Can Dance?” from 2013, cable television was next on the cutting room floor.

When we finally cut the cord we kicked ourselves for not doing it sooner. The savings is significant. $75 a month level significant. I can’t even tell you how much name brand cereal we bought as a result of our new windfall. Making it rain REAL Honey Bunches of Oats, y’all.

3) Our Handshake is Still the Best

This isn’t the first time that Glen hasn’t had cable tv. Rewind about 9 years and Glen lived solo in an attic apartment for one year. He was working and in grad school without a lot of free time for tv, so he just didn’t have one. When I went to visit him on the weekends we did weird stuff like talk, or go outside, or cook meals. It was like Little House on the Prairie.

One of the weirdest things we did was make up our own handshake. We had time to kill whenever we spent the weekend at his place and for whatever reason, this is what we decided to do one afternoon. It’s a pretty good, and rather complex, handshake though. We may or may not have done our handshake when we were introduced at our wedding reception.

When we cut cable this time we suggested to our kids that they make up their own handshake. Theirs’ is basically Ring around the Rosie for 20 minutes. Between the four of us, we all agree that Glen and I win the handshake battle.  For now. They’ll work on it.

The Cut Cable Guys

So what happened when we cut cable?

We couldn’t pause a football game that was going to continue on without us in real life regardless of our snacking habits, we saved some money, and our kids lost a handshake battle. The real takeaway here? If your television habits are minimal and/or center on streaming services anyway, it’s just not that big of a deal.

We’ve had to scramble to figure out how we could watch a couple football games that weren’t on our antenna channels, but thanks to my parents and Amazon Video, we figured it out. Plus there are fewer remote controls to lose now. Pros > Cons

So I say try it. Cut cable, save yourself some cash, save yourself a lot of time, and then call me if you miss your cable terribly. I won’t call your cable company for you to set it back up, because that sounds terrible, but I’ll apologize to you.

On second thought you’ll probably even get the new customer discount if you reinstall it so I don’t even feel that bad. How’s that for a weak preemptive apology?

Curious about the cost saving grocery hack? Check this post out!