Cancelling Cable

A big milestone in March – The Mula’s finally cancelled cable! As two busy working professionals, we honestly don’t watch any live TV, except for Pittsburgh sports. For the few shows we watch regularly, we typically let some episodes pile up for a while before we catch up.

Nowadays with all the other TV & movie streaming options, cable seemed unnecessary and expensive at least to me. When I spoke to Mr. Mula about this about nine months ago when we started our first budget – he was adamant we couldn’t cancel our cable subscription. Now in the thick of Penguin’s hockey season, you can imagine my surprise when he announced the decision to cut cable.

Here’s a look as to why:

  • Back in March 2017 when we moved back to Pittsburgh, our Cable & Internet bill was $122.44 per month. This also included 2 boxes with DVR.
  • A year later in March 2018, our bill increased to $199.52 – losing out on their introductory rates. The Hubs was on top of the cable company and the following month reduced our monthly payment back to $169.52.
  • Now in March 2019, our bill increased again to $206.52. However, this time the cable provider was not agreeable to any further price negotiation.
  • In 2018, we paid a total of $1,970.08 (2 months @ $122.44, 1 month @ $199.52, and 9 months @ $169.52).
  • In 2019, if we continued with our existing service, our total cost would be $2,404.24 (2 months @ $169.52 and 10 months at $206.52).  An increase of $434.16 or 22%!

True to form, the Hubs tried again to negotiate a price decrease, but the cable representative was not having it. Unfortunately, we live in an area where we do not have any alternative providers. As a result, the Hubs put his foot down and now we’re purely internet for $79.99 per month.

That’s a savings in 2019 of $1,258.69 versus prior year.

The best part is if you assume we continue to save that amount every year, compounded over 30 years, and assume we invest all those savings into a retirement account earning 3% interest– we could potentially save an additional $62,903 by the time we retire.  

Now that’s a lot of mula!  

The lesson is that It takes time and the right conditions for you to change your mindset. I could have pushed harder to cancel cable immediately and likely gotten in an argument resulting in the Hubs stubbornly digging in his heels and keeping cable. Ultimately, being patient has paid off to allow the Hubs the room to come to his own decision. And now we’re both on the same page about why we’re cancelling cable – because over our lifetime we cannot justify the value.

2 Replies to “Cancelling Cable”

    1. Sports are somewhat of a challenge to solve if you still live in the city where the team resides. I’ve given up on the Pirates so I really don’t think I’m going to miss baseball at all. I haven’t really watched over the last couple of seasons, so no issues there.

      We should be able to watch the majority of the Steelers games via over the air — but again I’ll admit we missed several of the games last year because the weather was nice and I didn’t want to be cooped up inside.

      The Penguins are a little bit more of a challenge. We’ll probably meet up with a few friends for some of the playoff games. If we weren’t in Pittsburgh the NHL has a great streaming app that’s fairly reasonably priced for the season. When we lived in NY — I used it extensively.

      I just like to think about the $120 per month we’re saving. 🙂

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