Anyone out there cut their cable cord?

[crazy canuck]

BB, just did a quick price check, with Telus, for 100 bucks (on sale now for 60) you get both internet and their Optik TV.  If you are paying 100 bucks for just cable you are paying some kind of premium.

Well yes, we have all the movie channels and HBO, which adds up a fair bit as well.

But cutting off cable would be a shared sacrifice.  I'd lose some sports, and my wife would lose those movie channels (which means no Walking Dead, no True Blood, etc.).  I can't ask my wife to cut out her movie channels, but I get to keep the sports package.

You can give up the movie channels and keep AMC, Space and some others - that is what we do so we can watch Walking Dead, Dr. Who etc.  It is, iirc, just one step up from basic.

[Admiral Yi]

Why do you feel the need to economize?  I thought you were making decent bank.

[crazy canuck]

Why do you feel the need to economize?  I thought you were making decent bank.

I suspect he is coming to grips with the cost of raising the starting forwards and defencemen for the next generation of Jets.

[Caliga]

$2,000 strollers 

[garbon]

I don't have cable as it is ridiculously priced in Manhattan. In a family of sharing, I use Hulu+ and Amazon Prime for most of my needs.

[frunk]

I suspect he is coming to grips with the cost of raising the starting forwards and defencemen for the next generation of Jets.

Best to get a trust fund now for the future dental work.

[Barrister]

Why do you feel the need to economize?  I thought you were making decent bank.

Wife's not working, and we've probably gotten a bit sloppy in our spending habits.  We're not running up debt or anything, but we're finding ourselves with nothing left by the end of the month (when we used to always have a good balance in the ole bank account), so just trying to go back and look at our expenses.

Plus, there's a weird deduction I only have to make for approx the six months of the year, which will start coming off my paycheque again in January.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I'd cut cable in a heart beat if not for the wife and kid. I need to look into options for letting my daughter watch children's programming through the various streaming services, I think if some of the kid shows she watches were available I could maybe swing it, I just haven't dug into it at all.

I have Netflix and Hulu+ and Amazon Prime, so any non-sports that I watch is on those services. Other than Breaking Bad and Boardwalk Empire recently I can't remember a show I watched on actual TV. I'm such a streaming/on demand guy I couldn't even tell you when shows are on or what network schedules are, and almost wouldn't bother with a show not available at my fingertips.

I actually like to watch my live sports in a local sports bar, so the occasional game I watch at home wouldn't be missed terribly. Plus, with terrestrial digital signals you can actually get some major sports over the air if they are on one of the networks.

[Malthus]

Why do you feel the need to economize?  I thought you were making decent bank.

Wife's not working, and we've probably gotten a bit sloppy in our spending habits.  We're not running up debt or anything, but we're finding ourselves with nothing left by the end of the month (when we used to always have a good balance in the ole bank account), so just trying to go back and look at our expenses.

Plus, there's a weird deduction I only have to make for approx the six months of the year, which will start coming off my paycheque again in January.

It's amazing how expenses continually increase if you don't watch them, isn't it. 

My own favorite savings technique, because I have recording and budgeting everything - the automatic transfer of a reasonable amount off the top into a savings account. Then, live on what is left.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Wife's not working, and we've probably gotten a bit sloppy in our spending habits.  We're not running up debt or anything, but we're finding ourselves with nothing left by the end of the month (when we used to always have a good balance in the ole bank account), so just trying to go back and look at our expenses.

Plus, there's a weird deduction I only have to make for approx the six months of the year, which will start coming off my paycheque again in January.

You're not asking for budgeting advice and I'm sure you're a smart enough guy to run your own finances, but I thought I'd mention the "budget to zero" philosophy I and my wife have used for years.

Basically at the beginning of each month, we total up our income for the month and then "budget to zero", basically meaning we allocate every dollar coming in to predefined expense categories. That way there is no "unassigned" money. The category balances build up over time if you don't end up spending them. After a certain period of carry overs you can decide on what to do with the excess. Some categories we frequently carry over would be things like electric / natural gas budgeted money in low usage months. With those, we let that money stay "assigned" to those categories because we know in higher usage months we'll want to draw from the surplus.

For other categories at the end of the year we take all the excess out and put into long term savings.

What I found great about switching to this system (which we did over ten years ago), is you no longer have to work throughout the month wondering if you're over or under spending. Everything is assigned a budget. To keep things on track you also record every transaction you make and make deductions from budget so you know where you're at. It sounds more involved than it is, for me it was an afternoon setting up an excel spreadsheet to do exactly what I needed and then just copying a new one for each month into a new worksheet. It sounds laborious to log your transactions but it works out to like 5 minutes a day.

[Ed Anger]

I know if I cut cable TV, the twins would murder me in my sleep.

[Malthus]

Wife's not working, and we've probably gotten a bit sloppy in our spending habits.  We're not running up debt or anything, but we're finding ourselves with nothing left by the end of the month (when we used to always have a good balance in the ole bank account), so just trying to go back and look at our expenses.

Plus, there's a weird deduction I only have to make for approx the six months of the year, which will start coming off my paycheque again in January.

You're not asking for budgeting advice and I'm sure you're a smart enough guy to run your own finances, but I thought I'd mention the "budget to zero" philosophy I and my wife have used for years.

Basically at the beginning of each month, we total up our income for the month and then "budget to zero", basically meaning we allocate every dollar coming in to predefined expense categories. That way there is no "unassigned" money. The category balances build up over time if you don't end up spending them. After a certain period of carry overs you can decide on what to do with the excess. Some categories we frequently carry over would be things like electric / natural gas budgeted money in low usage months. With those, we let that money stay "assigned" to those categories because we know in higher usage months we'll want to draw from the surplus.

For other categories at the end of the year we take all the excess out and put into long term savings.

What I found great about switching to this system (which we did over ten years ago), is you no longer have to work throughout the month wondering if you're over or under spending. Everything is assigned a budget. To keep things on track you also record every transaction you make and make deductions from budget so you know where you're at. It sounds more involved than it is, for me it was an afternoon setting up an excel spreadsheet to do exactly what I needed and then just copying a new one for each month into a new worksheet. It sounds laborious to log your transactions but it works out to like 5 minutes a day.

My system, while no doubt much more wasteful than yours, has the benefit of avoiding the spreadsheet and tracking everything. Just decide how much you need to live on for a month, automatically transfer the rest into savings, and spend whatever you haven't transferred.

Works for me, anyway.

[Malthus]

I know if I cut cable TV, the twins would murder me in my sleep.

Aren't they eventually going to do that anyway? Parricide is a rite of passage for evil twins. 

[derspiess]

I'd cut cable in a heart beat if not for the wife and kid. I need to look into options for letting my daughter watch children's programming through the various streaming services, I think if some of the kid shows she watches were available I could maybe swing it, I just haven't dug into it at all.

There is a decent bit out there from Amazon Prime and Netflix, but due to they way licensing agreements come & go for those services you never know when their favorite show will disappear.  Hulu+ may be more stable, dunno-- when we had it we didn't really use it for kids shows.

[Ed Anger]

I know if I cut cable TV, the twins would murder me in my sleep.

Aren't they eventually going to do that anyway? Parricide is a rite of passage for evil twins.