This! Works great.
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Streaming can be far less than cable, but it depends on what specific streaming services you purchase. Being an a la carte type model, you have the option to pay a small amount for streaming or a large amount for streaming.
It’s possible to get good deal for Internet without bundling. For example, I also have Spectrum for Internet. I pay $45/month for 1Mbps. I could pay less for Internet, but Spectrum gives me the equivalent of a free new Galaxy Plus each year (with $20/month cost for cell plan), if I bundle Internet + cell for $65/month.
As I mentioned earlier in the thread, I average under $5/month for streaming. No cable plan is anywhere near in the ballpark of my cost per streaming. This gets me all the streaming services that interest me at different points within any 2 year period. I catch up on the series and movies I like with one streaming service for a few months, then switch to another in the next few months. At any given time during year, I am typically subscribed to 2-3 streaming services. Example costs I’ve paid for different streaming services over the past 2 years are below.
Apple+ – Free (4 month free trial)
Peacock – Free (free for 1 year, with 1 year Instacart+ trial)
Prime – Free (free Amazon trial)
Crunchyroll – Free (3 month trial)
Hulu – $1/month (BF Deal)
Paramount+ – $1/month (email offer)
AMC+ – $1/month (deal)
MGM+ – $1/month (offer this deal a few times per year)
Disney – $2/month (can be added to Hulu for extra $2/month)
HBO Max – $3/month (BF Deal)
Netflix – $3-$4/month (paid in non-USD currency)
The higher streaming costs than cable usually involve a combination of:
- Subscribe to a large number of streaming services, some of which are rarely used
- Want traditional live channels to flip through, rather than choose from a library of thousands of saved shows for streaming
- Want to watch live sports, and less expensive streaming options do not have the all the games that you want to watch
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I can log in to my spectrum account on any smart tv and watch from there. Log out afterwards don’t save my log in information
I also can watch on my phone through the spectrum tv app. When I was at one of my kids during the Olympics, that’s how I watched.
I can’t get nbc, abc and cbs that way but if there is a sporting event, I can usually figure out a way to watch.
I’ve never had Roku
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Yikes. This seems extreme. But I guess it’s regional also.
Fun fact. I used to go to the Consumer Electronic Show for a few year’s since I had an audio /video business side gig. I met the two dudes that came up with the “Sling Box”. They just had one prototype to show. Really nice young guy’s. About two hours later they looked rattled and I asked why. Best buy just put an order in for something like 1,000 boxes and they had no way to make them. Lol. Maybe it was 5,000 and I asked them that their going to do and they said. Gotta figure something out before they find out. 
..
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This has been very educational!
We cut the cable last year with no regrets; it was less the money and more the stupidity of paying for channels we never ever watch. We have Netflix, and turn Apple TV on and off depending on what is appealing. Our adult kids share that Apple “family” account which has been nice, but I kicked them off Netflix. Our library has Kanopy, which we don’t use much but it sometimes has things we wanted to see (The Librarians doc, recently)
We do have Disney/Hulu/Live TV and it pains me deeply to pay $99/month to watch the Eagles – but DH is in a rough place without hockey and football, so once NHL is over, we drop to a lower level. (It’s the “Live” that costs so much). We watch a lot of sports, not a lot of regular tv outside of GBB.
We also still have a landline. My mom calls me a lot, and if she was pinging my cell I would miss many calls (and thus she’ll be convinced I am dead) and she is only familiar with our answering machine. So for now, a landline for Mom’s sake. Landlines are being sidelined for VOIP and I expect ours to go away, but hopefully not in her lifetime.
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We used to get paramount plus for an extra 24 hrs after flying but DH said it didn’t work last time. So we will probably sign up. I never remember to use prime plus.
gotta remember to follow this tread this month.
I kept my old fashioned landline ($60/month) for many years, mostly for my elderly father’s sake. So I get it. (And of course the next week we had a short power outage, which almost never happens. Turns out my cell service is not so good without wifi backup.) I had hoped to find an easy way to port the 30+ year old phone number over to VOIP in order but finally just let it die. Ha, details in another CC thread somewhere.
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After deciding to eliminate my land line, I kept it on for over 2 years, always saying I was going to port the number to a VOIP. Finally I decided to stop lying to myself about figuring out VOIP and I just cut it off. It was no big loss because no one ever called on that number except the automated library call reminding me of overdue/reserved books, or telemarketers.
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I’ve had the same cell phone number for 25 years. It is very similar to our old landline, which we moved from 18 years ago.
My mil still considers it our landline and the one she calls. Instead of my husband’s cell phone number. He tried to get her to call him from her cell phone but she never does.
I usually give him my phone and she never thinks about the fact that she’s calling my phone and not his.
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I ported our landline number to Google Voice. Free, it includes texting, and you can put the app on multiple phones if you need to. Works great.
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Google voice can be a good solution. But for folks who still have an old fashioned hard wired landline like I did, you have to do an interim step of first going to VOIP with a mobile carrier.
The great thing about my timing of letting the landline lapse is that we had no landline political calls this autumn 
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I technically have voip phone. We ported our number over years ago. It was cheaper to have it with cable and internet vs just cable/interner. However, the phone died and I refuse to buy another. So you can call it, but nobody will answer!
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