Have you considered cutting the cord (i.e. getting rid of your cable television and traditional phone line and replacing them with internet-based services) to save money each month? Brendan offers an analysis to help you determine whether this solution is right for your household, taking both sacrifices and benefits into consideration.
Topics Discussed:
Is it really cheaper to cut the cord?
The sacrifices you make when you get rid of cable
What you’re really paying for with traditional cable service bundles
Options and costs for streaming services
Added benefits of smart technology
Transcript:
I am Welcome to a new year's version of coffee with Brendon. Today we're going to talk about cutting the cord. That's a term that a lot of people are using nowadays, for those who are trying to get away from the big cable companies, the xfinity 80s, the Charter, the Comcast, the Verizon of the world, and go with an internet version of TV, Internet, and in some cases, a landline. So hopefully this, this analysis will show you how you can do it. Some people like my mom would just simply be happy with the traditional way of just flicking channels on the cable box. But I'll show you that more often than not, it's probably cheaper to cut the cord and go in that direction. But not all is roses. So there are some sacrifices that you have to make by doing that. But I just recently, probably about six months ago, cut the cord, I'm never going back to traditional cable companies. So I'm very happy with it. I'm kind of a gadget guy, I like new technology. So for people who are not as technologically are looking for differently, a little bit more interested in technology, this may not be their you know, the, this may not be something that they're very interested in. So let's get started. So it all started when I was looking at my cable bill. So let me start sharing my cable bill.
And what you see here is this is what I was actually paying for my cable. And I had one of those three, you know, the bundles that everyone has, and what I was pretty much paying was for internet, I was paying one second, let me change my pointer. For internet, I was paying $35 for the TV, I was paying $34. And for Home line home phone, I was paying 20. I also had a DVR that I was actually not paying anything for. But one of the big pieces, which caused me to actually make the change is that I had a number of, of discounts that were built into here that were all expiring soon. So I had $20 there, another $20 here and another $10 here. So I literally had $50 of, of expenses, or, say discounts that were all going away within 12 months, which is one of the main reasons why I decided to make the change.
But one of the things to always take into consideration is yes, you know, I had a pretty good bundle, and a good bundle price. But the problem was that was just this, you also have to pay for the internet router $15, you also have to pay for each of the sub top boxes, I had to set top boxes in my house, but that's 24 bucks right there. So $29 in equipment, and then add to that an additional $30 in taxes. So when all was said and done, I felt like I had a relatively conservative, you know, I didn't have any of the movie channels or any of that kind of stuff. And I was still paying $148 Less $149 a month. So didn't like that that much. And if I was to look at getting new service today, you know, you're looking at, you know, the same type of plan that I was paying $149 For back in the summer would cost me 200. You know, $213.19 So of course, as you guys know, I like my spreadsheets. So I put a little spreadsheet together to kind of show you what this is all about. So this is pretty much my cost analysis. So here's that 100 $648 This is the 213 that it would jump up to if I was to get that triple bundle today. I think most people have Netflix which is costing another 14 bucks. So they're looking at somewhere between 162 and 227 for the three, you know the triple bundle or whatever you want to call it from there.
So what I did is I went with this Middle cutting the cord. Now in order to do that, you actually do still have to pay the insurance or the the, the internet service provider. And in my case, I pay about 80 bucks for that. I do pay a company called uma to create a home landline, but that goes down to only $6. So almost $7. And then in order to get your actual channels, I use YouTube TV, there are a lot of different places where you can get your regular TV. There's Sling TV, which I'll talk about in a moment, there's Hulu live, I think it's called TV, which is right around that same cost. So all in all, I'm currently right now paying about $151 for, for pretty much what I was getting with the cable company, which he asked is a little bit more expensive than what I was paying before at the discounted price, but significantly less than what I would be paying right today if I was to take out, you know, do a full cable bill.
But the big, big thing, and I think this is one of the most understated benefits of cutting the cord is that just about every TV as a smart TV right now, in fact, some of the little Alexa's or the Google homes that you have sitting around the house that have a screen also can display YouTube TV. So like in the kitchen, we have this little you know, Google Home display, which is about this big, not too too big, and I can watch anything that's on YouTube TV, so any TV that's got a smart technology, you can actually watch TV on it. Whereas before, I could only watch it on two, two TVs in the house, because those were the two that I had to set top boxes, that's a huge, huge benefit. The other big benefit is if you do have a second home, for instance, you know, let's say at a vacation home, you can pretty much port all of that to to the new place. And then of course, you also have the ability to watch TV on your phone. So you know, long story short again, for someone that's technologically techno philic I guess it's called in likes technology. You know, cutting the cord really is the way to go. So, next step is let's take a look at some of the budget ways of doing this. So you could you know, my internet connection that I get through Verizon is their gigabit connection, you know, it's, it's five times the speed of what you really need, you know, you only need about 200 Mega bonds per second, I think that's the, I think that's what it's called. So through Verizon, you can actually get that for about 40 bucks, but you do have to pay 20 bucks for the router. Whereas with the gigabit connection, the cost of the router is built into the $79. So you're spending about $60 for the technology to get to get to the internet.
And you can actually get Sling TV, which is only $35. And it has about 32 to 43 channels, but it does not have local channels. So you'd have to actually get an antenna or something like that to actually give you the local channels most people want the local channel so you're looking at more of a YouTube TV or even that Hulu live. If you didn't get any of the Netflix the Amazon Prime, the Disney plus the Hulu, the HBO the Paramount or any of that stuff, you can pretty much have TV in your house just about every set every TV the app in your house and get it for less than 100 bucks if you cut the cord and go budget. If you went with the premium, which would be that same gigabit connection that I have the same YouTube TV, there's that 151 But you have your Netflix, you have your Hulu, you have your HBO Max, you have your paramount, you have your peacock network, you know that's going to run you about $200. So this is how I was able to save a little bit of money.
You know, this is pretty much my total cost is the 165 right now, versus what I would have been paying had I started cable or kept the cable that I had and all those discounts went away and I had to pay an additional $50. So I was able to save $50 A month that's $600 a year. Not too shabby. So hopefully this was helpful. You know, again, I'm kind of passionate about this. I've done a lot of research on this because I'm a pretty frugal guy and I like to try to save myself some money. But hopefully this was helpful to you. And if you do have any questions, feel free to reach out. Hope you have a great start to the year and we'll see you next time.
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