Third summer without television provides even more benefits.

For the third summer in my lifetime, I cancelled my cable television subscription.
I did it back in 1999 after the final episode of “Seinfeld” aired, as a semi-protest to the lack of good material available to watch. The protest kind of worked because a whole slew of decent shows like “The Sopranos” began airing that fall.
My wife and I also cancelled our cable in the summer of 2007, mainly because we were hoping to move from Wautoma to Portage County and thought we could make the move easier by getting rid of one of the objects we’d have to take care of anyhow. As luck had it, we didn’t sell our house until the spring of 2008 and our desire to watch many of our favorite shows caused us to reorder cable that September.
We cancelled it this summer for one main reason: to save some money. It’s only about $40 a month, as we still pay for our Internet service through the cable company. But $40 times three months is $120, and in today’s economy cutting $120 in three months time seems significant, especially since we’re using it to pay down some of our other debt.
Thrifty moves like this have allowed us to pay off three credit cards this year, leaving us with just two more to pay off. We didn’t have a significant amount of debt on any of these cards, but enough that we still had a $20 minimum monthly payment on each of them. By eliminating them, we’re able to save more money and increase the amount of available funds in our bank accounts every month.
According to my wife, this strategy of paying down debt to increase savings and available funds is Oprah’s “Debt Diet.”
I don’t know anything else about this “Debt Diet” – I’m just hoping it’s more successful than some of Oprah’s other diets. It seems to be working, as my wife and I have noticed a tremendous difference in our finances despite not receiving any pay increases during this time.
We’re even moving forward with house plans. Originally, we were looking to buy a house in Stevens Point or Plover based on criteria that included good location, a nice walk-in closet for the master bedroom, little to no fixing up as neither of us are handy, and a decent kitchen.
Over the past two years we’ve looked at a lot of houses, and none of them truly matched what we wanted. Building a house wasn’t really an option we considered because it seemed too expensive for us.
With Oprah’s “Debt Diet,” though, not only was that option put on the table, but it’s one we have nearly achieved, as we will close on a lot in the Eagle Point Subdivision in Stevens Point by the end of the month.
We’re not going to build a house on the lot until we pay it off hopefully within the next year, but my wife and I are thrilled we even made it this far, as we never imagined we’d be able to build our own house while we were in our 30s. We both assumed it wasn’t something we’d do until our 50s and our kid(s) was off to college.
We’re still discussing plans with a builder for when we actually begin construction, but we’re learning by our thrifty cable-cancelling ways and making sure the house we end up building is something that is affordable, yet to our liking.
This might mean learning a few things from my handy father-in-law, such as installing flooring in a few rooms, to save a few thousand dollars here and there. I’m fairly sure of myself that I won’t install the flooring upside down with a qualified instructor like him showing me what to do.
It might also mean permanently cancelling our cable subscription and instead relying on antenna television. I haven’t had that type of television since junior high, but in this age of the Internet and a seemingly endless supply of entertainment options, not having more than 100 channels isn’t a big deal.
In fact, it’s actually a relief. We are more active, I’ve read a bunch of the books that have gathered dust by our bed, and we’ve managed to avoid all the hoopla about Jon and Kate and their eight children.
My only regret is missing some of the Michael Jackson coverage. But listening to others complain about it gives me pause to think that I don’t regret that at all.