How Snow Birds Can Cut TV Costs Dramatically

I don't know about you but I love my TV. My husband can watch seasonal sports and I can watch those shows that I enjoy. We share a lot of interests so that is great!

When my husband and I move from North to South and then back again, the cable service has always been a problem. There was vacation service payments and extra boxes to return and purchase. It has cost us a lot of extra money over the years. The goal for the snowbird is to make the transition as seamless as possible.

So, yes we do love our TV BUT we resent the cost that cable companies and satellite dishes are charging. The cost is simply more than we want to pay. Many people cannot afford the fees. And cable has ceased to allow you too fast forward through the ads on recorded or On Demand shows. For many, the big cost was worth it as long as you had that advantage.

So my husband and I cut the cord completely. We do not have cable TV. Instead we have been using a streaming media player. We have both a Roku and a Firestick by Amazon. This leaves us free to pick what kind of streaming service we want. (Hulu or something like it is necessary to get most mainstream shows).

Best of all, we simply unplug the media players from our TV and take them along with their HDMI cords to our winter home. They are both very small. When we get to the new location we simply plug them in and do what the screen tells us to do to reconnect. The memory that we have stored on these services remains in place.

You will need:

1. Streaming service like DirectTVNow or Hula
2. A fast internet service. (we own two modems and wireless connectors.)
3. A streaming media player
4. A little bit of time to figure it all out.

Note: If you own an RV, you will need to figure that out. When we parked for the winter in one place we just paid for internet service.

We used DirectTVNow for over a year but things are changing with this kind of service. This last month we disconnect DirectTVNow. The service does not require a phone call to do that. We went online and disconnected. Most streaming services will allow you to do that. Then we signed up for another streaming service. It is a requirement because we cannot choose just the channels we want use individually...yet.

My son-in-law went with YouTube service. We decided to go with HULU Live TV.

HULU has all the same things as DirectTVNow and the cost is so much less...almost half as much for what we use. We opted to give HULU a try. I am loving it because it has shows that no one else has...Handmaids Tale for example. AND, if you want to pay a little extra, I think you can add no ad service to Hulu as well as unlimited screens. You could probably share this service with your family or friends. I have not tried it but noticed it in their information.

We also have Amazon Video which includes links to other services like Masterpiece, Britbox and Acorn. I see there may be others available.

We use our internet service a lot anyway so the speed of the internet is being paid for no matter what we do. Someday there will be a way to avoid that too. Here in Hillsboro a wireless internet service for everyone is becoming available but it not quite fast enough yet.

So, there you have it.

Questions anyone?

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