Lets dish

It is Friday and Fridays are for fun. Kind of cold and rainy this past week. I guess we need the rain but I am not sure I understand the benefits of cold except that it keeps me inside.

I don't watch a lot of TV. We have an ancient television in the living room and a decade old television mounted on the wall in my office, yet for some reason we were paying around $80 a month for cable TV.  The cable bill goes up every year.  When I ask about it they tell me the same thing each year. They tell me that they add features and services and make improvements in the system. I never asked for many of the services they offer but I have to pay for them anyway. They don't deduct anything from the bill when it doesn't work right or when there is an outage. 

Many services and devices have improved over the years and at the same time the prices have gone down.  Computers are faster than ever and have bigger hard drives and more features but the prices are lower than they used to be. It is the same with mobile phones and calling plans.  The phones are better, the coverage area is larger and the cost per minute is less than it was a decade ago. The cable company has a monopoly, they don't have  to provide better services at a lower price because they don't have any competition.

Last month I brought my one digital cable receiver and my last cable bill to Comcast.  The bill was for $89.00 but I only had to pay $14.  Apparently with cable I was paying ahead.  My bill was not always that high, it crept up over the years until the last one was high enough to make me want to cry. There is now a satellite dish on the back of the house. From the look of the thing if there is a wind strong enough to take it out it will be strong enough to take out the back of the house too.   Most of what I know about the dish I learned from the cable company. So my expectations were low. I figured at half the cost it would be half as good, but was willing to take the risk. 

The dish exceeded expectations and I have not had any problems with it. The picture is as clear as can be when it is windy or stormy out. There have not been any outages like there were with cable. The monthly bill is less than half as much and so far I can't find anything missing.  The local channels are all there as are the channels that I watched through cable. I found a channel that I always wanted to have but could not get without increasing my monthly cable bill. It has not changed my viewing habits.  Never have there been so many channels with so little to offer so I still don't watch much TV.

My internet is high speed DSL.   No it isn't as fast as cable but it is high speed and again less than half the cost of cable.  I am not sure how much faster it needs to be for looking up MLS numbers. I know that it is fast enough to enjoy a high quality movie from Netflix over the internet. On the screen the movie looks just like a movie being played on a DVD. I don't think it is as slow as the turtles in the cable ads. I never have to wait for anything.

I run a business from my home and need to have internet access 24 X 7. While my neighbors have blazingly fast cable they have more problems and outages. I don't have any problems or outages at all.  Like cable, DSL gets faster each year.  Living in the city near downtown helps. I know that DSL is not available everywhere and it isn't as reliable on the older phone grids as it is here in the city. 

My total savings is somewhere between $80 and $90 dollars a month and worth every penny of it. It puts a smile on my face.  Bringing the converter box and the bill  to Comcast was a great feeling. When I left with a receipt that indicated my bill was paid in full and no converter box I felt lighter and happier.

Just for fun, go through your monthly bills and see if you can lower them or get rid of them all together. use the money you save to dine out once or twice a month  at a neighborhood restaurant, or put it in a coffee can and bury it in the backyard. It may do better in the coffee can than in a retirement plan. We lost most of our retirement in the last few months and plan to work well into our 90's.  If we had put the money in a coffee can we would be able to retire when still in our 70's.  It will be easier to save now with that extra $80 or $90 a month, but I am not telling anyone where the coffee can is.