Frugality
So today I made the decision to cancel both my landline phone service and my satellite service, largely in order to save a hundred bucks a month I'd rather spend on something else. Cutting out those two saves me almost $1200 a year, which is enough to pay for a new computer, a trip to Iceland, or about a zillion other things I probably will enjoy a lot more.
The landline was pretty much a no-brainer. Honestly, I probably shouldn't have bothered keeping it around as long as I did -- I haven't gotten any actual calls that weren't telemarketers on that line for years, so keeping it just didn't make much sense at all when I have a cell phone I use for pretty much everything else.
My satellite service was a little harder to kill. I have to admit I've been fairly happy with DirecTV, and when I first got it and tasted the sweet, sweet nectar of TiVo for the first time, I was pretty damn impressed. Over the last year or so, though, I've come to feel like I'm just not getting $60 worth of entertainment out of my TV a month -- or, at the very least, that what I want I can get elsewhere. I watch most of the TV I watch now on Hulu or one of the networks' sites, and their shows go up there the next day; if I want to watch older shows, I don't need to watch something in syndication, I can just Netflix it. I don't have a giant HDTV like more and more people I know -- if I did, I admit I might be more interested in getting HD content for my TV, but my nearly ten-year-old 28" CRT does not need 1080p programming, and it still works just fine for playing DVDs.
So here we go. Goldsmith, if you're reading this -- I'll never make fun of you again, man.
The landline was pretty much a no-brainer. Honestly, I probably shouldn't have bothered keeping it around as long as I did -- I haven't gotten any actual calls that weren't telemarketers on that line for years, so keeping it just didn't make much sense at all when I have a cell phone I use for pretty much everything else.
My satellite service was a little harder to kill. I have to admit I've been fairly happy with DirecTV, and when I first got it and tasted the sweet, sweet nectar of TiVo for the first time, I was pretty damn impressed. Over the last year or so, though, I've come to feel like I'm just not getting $60 worth of entertainment out of my TV a month -- or, at the very least, that what I want I can get elsewhere. I watch most of the TV I watch now on Hulu or one of the networks' sites, and their shows go up there the next day; if I want to watch older shows, I don't need to watch something in syndication, I can just Netflix it. I don't have a giant HDTV like more and more people I know -- if I did, I admit I might be more interested in getting HD content for my TV, but my nearly ten-year-old 28" CRT does not need 1080p programming, and it still works just fine for playing DVDs.
So here we go. Goldsmith, if you're reading this -- I'll never make fun of you again, man.
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You explained quite clearly that you need to spend a bunch of money on a new TV to better appreciate your DirecTV service. I think your mistake is obvious :)
I find it hard to justify a TV that costs upwards of a grand when I will probably only use it once or twice a week for an hour at a time, on top of whatever HDTV service would run me. Most of the time when I'm watching TV I'm either in my bedroom or at the computer, neither of which is really a good place for a new giant TV. :)