Do you subscribe to cable or dish TV? How much does that cost you each month? How much TV, in hours, do you actually watch in that month? How many channels do you watch regularly?
At this little place here, we don't pay for TV. We have a set of rabbit ears, and with those we get in more channels than we actually watch. At last count, we got reception, depending on the weather and where we position those ears, for about 20 channels. We only watch about 5 of them.
The decision not to pay for TV came many, many years ago. When DH was still in college, when we lived in the Upper Peninsula and only got one channel with our rabbit ears, we tried cable for a month. One month. It was a free installation and free one month trial. It was a classic marketing game: give them something free in order to get them hooked into long term payments. Because what college aged people wouldn't want more than one television channel and be willing to pay for cable?
Well, apparently two: me, and DH. After our one month trial was up, we called the cable company and told them to disconnect it. Because we had learned that even with dozens of TV channels available, we only cared to watch three of them regularly. One was the one we'd always gotten reception for. One was the Weather Channel (boy, we were wild!). The third was Country Music Television. We realized we didn't need to watch CMT all day long, and once you've seen the weather forecast for the next 24 hour period, you don't need an update every 15 minutes (especially in the U.P.--today: snow, tomorrow: snow, day after tomorrow: snow). So why pay for TV?
About eight years later, Mother-In-Law gave us a $100 gift certificate to an appliance store one Christmas, with the instructions that we were supposed to spend it on a satelite dish so we could "get more TV channels". At that time, our rabbit ears were pulling in about five. We really only watched three, and the kids were allowed to watch one of those: PBS. DH and I discussed it, and decided we really didn't want satellite TV. It took some explaining to Mother-In-Law, but we used that gift certificate toward part of the price of a new bed instead (ours was getting to be in bad shape, having been another hand-me-down we'd gotten along the way).
She had the hardest time trying to understand why we didn't want more TV. Alot of people don't understand. Maybe you don't understand.
You might say "But it's only $50 a month" (or however much it costs, I really don't know. We don't even look at those offers when they come in the mail.) Think about the math for a minute. $50 a month is $600 in a year. In ten years, it's $6,000. In twenty years (how long it's been since DH & I tried cable), it's $12,000. You can buy a car for that much. In some areas, you can buy a house for that much! You can attend college for an entire year for that much at many institutions of higher education.
Do you really need more TV channels than you can pull in with an antenna for free? Do you really need to spend thousands of dollars in the next decade just so you can watch TV? Wouldn't you rather pay cash for a new car, or be able to pay a chunk of change for a house instead of having to take out a thirty-year mortgage for one? What about a brand new living room set, or a kitchen remodel ten years from now instead of paying for TV in that time frame? Or one year of college loan-free for your child?
Not only is it cash out of your pocket, it's time out of your life. How many hours of TV do you watch now? How many of it is spent on channels you can only get through cable or satelite? What could you be doing with those hours instead of staring at a TV screen?
Give it a long, hard thought. How much TV do you really need?
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