Frugal Friday: "Cord Cutting"(10 Ways to Reduce Household Expensfes)

(Okay, I know this post is a day late. Yesterday was a VERY busy day for us, 2 doctors appointments 45mins from each other, but then we got to end the day with movie/pizza night with two of our closest friends. So needless to say, there wasn't even one spare minute for blog posting. )

It has been well over 6 months since we have had satellite or cable here at the home and we are not missing it one bit and are saving $50+ a month.

When I mentioned "cutting the cord" to my sweet husband, he was not very interested at first. He is like any other man, he likes his t.v. and he likes his variety. So needless to say, I was pushing to get rid of this service way before he was interested.


Then, he came up with a plan. Him being a tech guru and computer geek (this is what he does for a living anyway) found a way for us to have Netflix and Hulu AND local channels all at the same place on our computer hooked up to our flat screen television. He even found a remote to use for the computer/tv, so that we didn't have to always get down and use the mouse/keyboard.

Isn't he just amazing! Well that may be what you are thinking, but when he first mentioned it to me, I was not very thrilled. I went into this whole getting rid of satellite thing, to try and limit our tv watching and all he was doing was giving us even more variety and making it even easier for us to watch our favorite shows! So now it was his time to convince me.

It didn't take very long for me to be convinced because we would be saving so much money and what he had came up with was really cool and did make it easy and it made everyone happy. So this is what we did. We "cut the cord" to Dish and signed up with Netflix for streaming only (7.99/month) and made an account with Hulu.

Monty also bought an outside antenna to put on the roof and hooked it up to television as well for us to have local tv channels. All in all, in order to get started with all he was going to do, we paid about $100.

Here is all he bought to get us set up:

• a RCA UHF/VHF HD Antenna


• Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-150 PCI TV Tuner.....this one here at Amazon comes with remote


• and 50ft of RG-6 cable

*alot of this he bought used and saved a lot of money that way.

That may seem a lot to pay to you but that is all we have had to pay, we haven't paid anything since except for the Netflix monthly service fee.

Now you could do this without all the extra equipment my husband purchased, it is completely up to you. If it had been me, we probably wouldn't have all of this, but he is so in love with technology this is what he needed and I was fine with that. And I do have to admit now that it is very nice!

Then, after he had purchased all equipment and hooked it up, we then used our media center in an old desktop we had, put the tuner in that , used Windows 7 and ran the media center. In order to get Netflix, Hulu, and local channels all together in the media center he had to download the following apps: you can find all of these through a google search for free

• Netflix app (if you have windows 7 this is already in Media center, you just have to hit install)


• Media Browser


• Meta Browser (version 1 is free)


• Hulu integrated app

So, all in all this is what we did to start saving money on television and it has been great. And like I said, you dont have to do all that we did, you could just "cut the cord" from cable and just use netflix and hulu just from your pc or just use Hulu and then everything would be completely free for you. It is up to you how you want to do it, this is just what worked for us.

Questions about any of this? Please comment and my husband and I would be more than happy to help you out in any way we can!

Have you cut the cord from cable? How have you enjoyed it or what struggles have you had?