Saving Big Bucks: I Did a Little Cord Cutting

I'm not the kind of guy who loves change. In fact, I hate it. And, it's not because I'm old; although, I suspect my embrace of change has weakened in my declining years. I can't tell because I never liked it. I'm a creature of habit. I drink at the same places when in Greenville. I try to park in the same row in the same lot whenever I fly out of the local airport. Saturday nights at home mean Italian food and rented movies. I like to stick to a routine. Does that make me boring? I don't know, but I do know I'm not bored.

During the past 30 days I initiated two big changes in my connectivity. So far, so good.

I have contemplated “cutting the cord,” abandoning my cable TV completely for more than a year. Until the first of this month, the main source of my TV programming was AT&T's Uverse. Available sources for my programming consist of Uverse and Comcast. Because of a copse of tall pine trees on the adjoining lot on my property's southern border, satellite TV has never been an option. I also pay for Netflix and get programming through Amazon Prime.

When I first moved to Greenville, Comcast was my only option. Boasting the worst DVR in the industry, Comcast was a compromise I simply couldn't live with long term. As soon as Uverse became available in my area eight or nine years ago, I dumped Comcast and picked up Uverse. Eventually AT&T provided my cell phone service, my broadband and my TV.

A few months ago I dropped its broadband for Spectrum, thus saving $20 a month and improving my speed by a thousand percent. With AT&T, uploading a 30-minute video to YouTube required seven or eight hours. I can upload the same video through Spectrum in about 45 minutes.

Beginning November 1, I dropped Uverse. The monthly cost without any movie channels was around $120 a month. That works out to $1,440 a year. Hey, I work for a living. Forking out nearly $1,500 a year for TV that I'm only home to watch about 250 days a year simply doesn't work for me anymore. After looking at streaming alternatives, I settled on YouTube TV. My monthly bill with fees is less than $55 a month or less than $660 per year. That's an annual savings of $780 over Uverse.

I am satisfied with the switch to streaming so far. Two downsides are first, I no longer have a guide for upcoming programming. That is not a big deal, I rarely watch TV in real time. The programs I record are on a weekly schedule. The second shortcoming is I can no longer fast forward through the commercials. Because the programs I record are set up to stream, the commercials are limited, but I'd still prefer to fast forward through them. I'm getting used to this change. (Update: YouTube TV recently enhanced its recording capability that allows fast forwarding through commercials on recorded programs. Yea!)

To recap, in switching my broadband and TV services from AT&T to other sources, I'm saving more than $1,000 a year. That's a lot of bourbon.

AT&T is forcing me to haul my DVR, modem, remote and assorted wires to UPS to ship them back. All of this stuff is over eight years old. I suspect they will open the box and then chuck the whole mess into the trash. This is more to punish me for leaving them than it is to somehow refurbish all that junk for someone else's use.

I have to make a trip to UPS anyway. When you reach a certain age, rather than a colonoscopy, the health of your colon can be evaluated by shipping your poop off somewhere to be analyzed. I call it, “poop in a box.” The company sends a box in which you poop. You then take said box to UPS and some poor counter person sends it on its way. In the case of my Uverse junk, UPS boxes it up, labels the box and sends it off free of charge. I will accomplish both these tasks on the same visit. I hope the UPS clerk doesn't make a mistake and switch them. Someone at Uverse will be in for a big surprise.But it would accurately reflect my feelings about them gouging me all these years.

My second big step in the past 30 days was to replace my P.O.S. Samsung Galaxy S7 with a Google Pixel 3A smartphone. I only had my S7 for seven months when I dumped it. I must confess, I made the change for reasons other than not liking the S7. I would have held on to it for at least 12 months. I hate spending hundreds of dollars on something as stupid as a phone. As it is, I never buy a phone new. I buy phones that are at least a generation old and save roughly half on them. But, in the case of the 3A, it was still about $350.

One of my main gripes with the S7 was that almost every day, I would have to access it by typing in my password rather than using my thumb print. I know. Not exactly the last chopper out of Saigon, but annoying nonetheless. Doing a little research, I found this is a common issue with the S7. There is a very involved possible fix, but I never could muster the energy to follow the numerous steps. I don't get it. The damn phone updates itself once or twice a month with things that have no bearing on my usage nor service. Why not do an update and fix a real problem? Nope. At least once a day I'd have to type in my password.

The real reason I switched phones is I wanted a phone better suited to live broadcasting to Facebook and YouTube. My team (Yes, I have a BEER2WHISKEY team.) will be live broadcasting from Barley's Biggest Little Beer Fest in January. After talking to people who do a lot of live broadcasts and researching gear, I decided the simplest path would be to use a smartphone. Always one to take the easiest road, I began looking for a smartphone capable of broadcasting in HD (S7 isn't) that also has a 3.5 jack to plug in an exterior microphone. Of course, it had to have a great camera, as well. The 3A filled the bill.

Thus far I am pleased with the 3A. I have yet to find anything to hate. That's a major thing in itself. If we are Facebook friends, you will probably see more live broadcasts from me between now and the January beer fest as I attempt to get comfortable with the process. I did some live broadcasting from the Whiskey Vault and the Texas Truck Rodeo a couple of weeks ago. Seemed to be fine.

Stay tuned. More to come.