Two Years Sans Cable TV

Trent @ Simple Dollar is dropping his cable TV subscription, and provides a list of benefits for doing so.  We canceled ours two years ago and I think the list is spot-on.   We really haven’t missed cable… except one, brief, lapse.  We turned our cable back on for the Super Bowl, because if the weather is bad antenna reception is a bit dodgy and we were having guests over to watch the game.  (Hey, it was the Saints and we live in New Orleans.  A Super Bowl party was obligatory.)

One of the biggest benefits for me was not watching HGTV – or as I call it, the Covet Channel.  Yes, okay, I could have changed the channel.  In all seriousness, I simply never realized until after I stopped watching how dissatisfied those shows made me with my own home.  I’m certainly not opposed to home improvement.  But I’d much rather give to organizations like the orphanage in Mexico my church supports, Compassion, and Kiva than Lowe’s and Hope Depot.

Another benefit Trent mentions is not being culturally up to date, and to that I say, “amen” as well.  I spend so much time on the internet that I can’t help but get some pop culture references.  But overall I’m content to not know much about Justin Biebur.  Instead, I’m enjoying Winston Churchill’s 6 volume set The Second World War and catching up via Netflix on episodes of Eureka that I missed.  The bottom line is we’re saving some money and being a whole lot more deliberate about our entertainment choices – instead of sitting aimlessly in front of the tube flicking through channels and complaining “There’s nothing on.”  For us, it was a good decision.