A great way to cut your budget in the living room is to cut the cable or satellite tv.
Now this is a bold statement! As Americans, many of us LOVE our television shows. And honestly, what isn’t more relaxing than sitting down to a Hallmark movie, Nickelodeon cartoon, or a quick episode of Discovery channel’s Cash Cab?
But the question is, can you do without it? The best part is – you don’t have to.
Cable/Satellite TV Alternatives
There are many FREE solutions to getting your fill of TV online. Hulu.com is a popular choice. Not only is it FREE, but it SAVES you time. When you watch your shows, you have less commercials – so an hour episode, now only takes about 45 minutes to watch.
Did you know you can watch movies on Hulu too? Just click the movies tab at the top. Sure, some are old and outdated, but they are always adding new ones and running specials for a few weeks at a time.
If you are in to cooking, and you don’t want to watch commercials, consider watching your favorite cooking shows at foodnetwork.com. Just click the FULL EPISODES link in the top right corner.
CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox and the WB all offer you the option to view their shows on their sites. At the WB you can even watch your favorite Friends reruns.
PBS Video Beta has an unbelievable amount of full episodes available for Antique Roadshow, Nova, Nature, Julia Child, Frontline and Masterpiece.
The Discovery Channel has Cash Cab, (my favorite!), available in full episodes! They also have American Chopper, Dirty Jobs, Mythbusters, Man vs. Wild and many more. (Some of these are just episode clips.)
And finally, for the kids (and the young at heart), who doesn’t love some cartoons and a little Nickelodeon!?
How the Math Adds Up
This Budget Savers tip may be scary to consider at first, but if you do the math, $50/month x 12 months = $600/year!
If you save $600 per year and keep adding $50 to it each month, and earn 4% interest over a span of 10 years, by the end of the 10 years you’ll have saved almost $10,000.
What really makes you think – is when you do the math for 40 years, which is roughly the time to our retirement age. Believe it or not, if you continue the above savings over those 40 years, you would have saved almost $65,000!!
