I plan to write numerous articles about saving money, saving time, making money, and “making” time. First on my list of wastes of money and time is cable television. If you want to add some coin to your pockets and get stuff done, get rid of cable television!
Cable and Dish TV is a lose-lose-very-seldom-win product and service.
The first loss is the money in your bank account. Most people pay $30 to $120 a month for cable TV depending on what package they ordered! That’s $360 to $1440 per year!
The second loss is even worth more. The loss of your valuable time! How much time do you waste watching, for the most part, worthless television shows? Not only do you have to pay for wasting your time, you also are paying to subject yourself to advertisements and psychological warfare to get you to think you need this or that and to spend even more of your money!
Don’t get me wrong. I do enjoy a few television shows myself. Particularly comedies like The Office, 30 Rock, Modern Family, and a few others. I also really enjoy shows on TLC, Discovery, NatGeo, HGTV, History Channel, and etc. You know, more education and spur your creativity type shows.
My wife and I scrapped Cable TV a few months ago and subscribed to Netflix as soon as they started streaming to Wii consoles (since we have a Wii). For about $10 a month we get to have one DVD out at a time and unlimited streaming. We love it! We have watched all of the first three seasons of 30 Rock, commercial free! Each episode is about 22 minutes without commercials. That saves about 8 minutes of time if we had watched them live on TV. With approximately 20 episodes per season, if I recall correctly, and 3 seasons that’s 8 minutes saved per episode * 20 epsiodes / season * 3 seasons = 480 minutes saved! Or 8 hours saved!
I don’t know about you, but, if I break my salary into an hourly rate, my “free” time (anytime beyond 40 hours a week for work) is worth more than time-and-a-half, double-time, and sometimes even more than quadruple-time rates! Remember, time is the only thing you can’t get more of! You can always get more money! If I were to place a going rate of $60 an hour for my free time, saving those 8 hours was equivalent to $480. $60 per hour * 8 hours = $480!
Now in order to truly save this time, you have to wait until the season is available via streaming (or check out the DVD and go through the episodes). So there are 5 seasons of 30 Rock available from Netflix. The first three are available for streaming. Seasons four and five are available on DVD. I’m assuming if you wanted to purchase a full season of 30 Rock you’re looking at $20 to $40 a season. But for $10 one could easily check out those DVDs and watch those seasons saving you $30 to $70!
If you haven’t figured out by now, I love Netflix! The Wii isn’t the only thing Netflix streams to either. If you have an Xbox, PS3 (Play Station 3), or a compatible DVD player or device (check out the Roku) you can stream Netflix. They are continually adding more streaming selections and DVDs all the time! Try Netflix FREE!
Do you have Netflix, have a question, or have a comment about my post? Leave a comment.
Cable, Netflix, Television, TV
