We do not have a TV. Okay, that is a lie. We have two TVs because we got a new one for Christmas. The old one is in the extra room quietly awaiting its use as a future babysitter. The new one is in the living room where the old one used to be. But still, we often tell people we don't have a TV. That is because it is easier to say that than to say, "Where we live we cannot get any reception, and we don't have cable or satellite, and we have a policy not to pay for TV." See? "We don't have a TV," is much simpler.
I like our no-paying-for-TV policy. I like it a lot. It saves us a lot of money to watch the shows we watch ("Downton Abbey," "Person of Interest," and "Who Do You Think You Are?") on Hulu or on the network sites. I guess it's a pain to have to wait 24 hours from the original time the show aired, but you can pay me $50 per month (That's how much a cable bill is, right?) to wait for each of the shows I watch.
I will readily admit that I miss having ready access to college football during the fall. We usually would go to other people's homes to watch the BYU football games, and that was always fun. Still I was sad that I didn't get to see more than just the BYU games. (Although not particularly sad that I didn't get to see the National Championship (if you can call it that). I heard about it on NPR and on Facebook. It sounds like it wasn't an awesome game.)
We've actually been spending so much time watching TV online lately (we have recently started watching "Arrested Development" again) that we've downgraded our Netflix account to only have 1 DVD out at a time. We're just saving money left and right, folks.
We are surely not the only people who are not paying for TV. Are we?
8 comments:
We're exactly like you! We don't get reception in the basement so we just use Hulu.
You are not the only ones. We haven't had tv for almost three years. We use Hulu for tv shows and the library (we have an awesome library) for kid cartoons and movies. I agree that have that extra $50 per month is SO worth.
We don't have cable, not just because it saves us a ton of money. But because there is a lot of garbage (read pornography and idiocy) on TV, even the commercials. We would rather have the ability to choose what we want to watch, knowing we can control what we see before we even turn it on. We watch what we want to watch (which still isn't very much) online; and we also downgraded our Netflix, but to streaming (which we use especially for the kids). Also, I don't need one more excuse to waste time. Having TV, and paying for it, would probably encourage me to watch more to justify the bill.
Nope; I've never paid for TV, and I never want to. Although I will admit, I do enjoy a couple of veg days - watching Food Network, and TLC, and HGTV for hours on end - when I go home for Christmas.
The last time I had TV was in college, when the apartments came with free cable. Someone gave Jared and me an old TV after we got married and we finally broke down and bought a super cheap antenna for it so we could watch the Olympics, but we could only get one channel (luckily NBC!). After the Olympics, we took it down and put the TV back in the closet. Here in Illinois, we don't get a single channel, so our TV is reserved for playing movies. I would much rather put $50/month into our retirement accounts.
I agree on not paying for TV. We have a Roku, which streams internet shows to the actual TV set. We also have an Apple TV, which does the same thing (but different shows). Most excellent.
We have cable, but we have no choice but to pay for it - it's part of our rent.
But when it HAS been optional, we've never chosen it.
All free here! :D
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