We used to bundle. (Note to self: When a salesman mentions the word "bundle" it's a marketing ploy to get me to pay more for stuff I don't need or want.) We had phone/internet/cable with one easy payment of way too much. When Hubby had enough of telemarketing on our bundled phone and seen enough reruns of "Housewives" on our bundled cable and gotten kicked off our bundled internet enough, he shut 'er down. All of it.
And it hurt. It really did. We had that home phone for over 25 years. In fact, I believe I ordered phone service from a PHONE BOOTH. Everyone knew to get ahold of us at that number. That number WAS us.
Here's what we do about phone. Before our bundle expired, we went to Sears. We bought Trac phones with double minutes at $19.95. We bought a year of service and (I think) 450 minutes (doubled to 900 minutes by our phones) for a little over $100 each. I can't remember the exact amount. Let's call it $150 for each phone with one year service and 900 minutes. We called everyone we could think of with our soon-to-expire house phone and let them know our new numbers. We're not big phone talkers. We keep in touch with our family and friends via phone, text, email, facebook, and easily stay within our allotted 900 minutes. But if we didn't, we would just go out and buy more minutes. So, right now, our phone service for two phones is $25 per month. If our actual li'l Trac phones last more than one year, that amount goes down. Technically.
Then there's internet. We use free WiFi from a generous neighbor. We really lucked out with our neighbors :) We're not gamers and we don't do fancy stuff on our computer, so WiFi is plenty for us. It cost us a bottle of homemade blackberry brandy and some blackberry jelly from our brambles. I'm callin' it free.
And the almighty cable. The only time we watch much TV is really from about October through April. We have a remote piece of property we like to play on when we can get there. When the snow lays in we can't get there and we're stuck at home. All the time. 24/7. In the pouring Pacific Coast rain. So we (I) craft (Hubby's not much for crafting), visit friends and relatives, travel a bit (OK, we're not stuck at home ALL the time), cook, read, do little home maintenance things, and watch cableless TV. How? Here's our set-up:
We've amassed a couple-hundred movies over the years. These are movies we don't mind watching over and over. OK, Hubby does get little tired of Galaxy Quest, but it IS the best movie ever! They were gifts or yard sale finds or gotten from thrift stores or Target sales. You'll notice we have a DVD player AND a VCR. A great youtube video taught me how to clean my VCR and I love ours because (1) it's easy to clean and (2) you can pick up movies for almost nothing. Check out youtube for VCR cleaning. Simple stuff. All you really need is a small phillips screwdriver, some alcohol, a few q-tips, and 20 minutes.
But there does come a time when we want to watch something new. We do go to family and friends and borrow their movies. But after that, we go to our local video store. It's a family-owned store and they allow us to rent 3 older movies for the price of a new release. We buy $30 punch cards with 10 punches on them which equals out to 30 movies for $30. We might get about 3 of these cards per year. Probably more like 2, but I'll go for the high side. So $90 for punch cards and *maybe* $20 for movies we get at yard sales or store sales. $9.17 per month for TV. Plus, NO COMMERCIALS!!!! AND we only watch what we want to watch!
Our custom phone/internet/cable "bundle" costs us $34.17 per month. And will be less the longer our little Trac telephones last. Now THAT is a deal.
Yep....I love my cable TV. Not for reality TV shows (which don't really seem realistic - I mean WHO has that much drama, besides Craig). I love my Game of Thrones on HBO, Newsroom (HBO), The Walking Dead (AMC), Lost Girl and Being Human on Syfy. Of course, I don't craft like you do...Knitting BLECKKK.
ReplyDelete