How to cut the cable cord!

This last year has truly been a challenge for me being so technically challenged. My old computer was on it’s last leg and I struggled endlessly to make it do what I wanted it to do. Hubby kept after me to get a new one, but I kept putting it off. I hate shopping for electronics because I know so little about them and it’s kind of embarrassing walking into an electronics department and telling them you need an “idiot-proof computer”. Well, I finally did just that a few months ago. We had a very nice young man listen to me and showed us a few computers and I settled on a very simple computer. By the way, that was the easy part, because I then needed to learn how to navigate the latest Windows program. I still struggle a little, but I am getting the hang of it and am back to blogging again.

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Anyway, while we were talking with this young man, I’m not sure how the subject of Roku came up, but we also discussed streaming services and ended up buying a Roku along with the computer. This has been on my radar for several years, especially that one week every month when I would open our DirecTV bill. $144 a month with NO premium channels and no movie rentals! Then I’d think about our internet service and how slow it is out here in the country and the Roku would then become a fleeting thought.

That Roku sat in the box for over 2 months before we finally opened it to see if by chance it would work. We were totally surprised that it did actually work! We waited about 2 weeks, played around with the Roku and learned how to use it, before we seriously discussed dropping the satellite tv. We were just going to put it on hold for $7 a month, but decided to just totally cancel it. It wasn’t totally painless. I had a panic attack brewing as the words came out of my mouth to cancel the service, then I blurted out “tomorrow, turn it off tomorrow”.

It’s a been a month satellite-free now. We initially paid about $30 for the Roku, but there is no monthly charge, and we added 15 free channels first and then added Discovery Plus with no ads for $7 a month (1st 30 days free). It includes programming from 19 cable channels! I also have Amazon Prime for $14 a month, which I haven’t even programed into Roku yet, and there is so much more to watch on it. You can get a 30 Day Free Trial at Amazon Prime which includes free shipping and you can borrow Kindle books, and instantly watch thousands of movies and TV episodes.

There are so many free channels on Roku, with every genre. Current weather and local news were a big consideration for us and we can get all of that. We are enjoying all the old tv shows we grew up watching, Westerns galore, thousands of movies, all of the crime shows we love to watch, reality shows, cooking shows, exercise programs, family-friendly programming and movies…there are just too many to list! We have not been at a loss to find something to watch. It’s simple to use after a little figuring out and is displayed in such a way to make it easy to find programs and movies. One cool feature is you can pause programming, and if need be, you can come back another time and pick up where you left off.

All in all, we cut our tv viewing costs down from $144 a month to $21 a month. I didn’t include the $60 a month we pay for internet and phone combined, because we have to have it anyway. Do we miss the satellite tv? Not really. The only drawback is that we don’t get current brand new episodes. To us, that’s not a big deal, since we have so many brand-new-to-us never-seen-before shows and movies. There are commercials on some of the free channels, but they aren’t 5 to 10 minutes long like on paid tv. Sometimes there’s a little buffering going on because of the draw on internet usage in our area, but I just remember I am saving about $125 a month, That is $1500 a year! Yes, $1500!

So if you are trying to save a little money, give it a try. Coming from a tv addict, it’s not near as hard as I expected.