There's a Recession On!

I am sure if you have not been affected by the recession you have at least heard about it on the news. The downturn in the economy and the recent changes in the mortgage lending and licensing requirements had caused a shrinkage in my disposable income. So I started looking at ways I could trim expenses out of my budget. My satellite bill was $145.00 a month to have High Definition programming and all of the premium channels.

Initially I cut the programing to just the basic channels. I found the remaining programming was all of the crap that I didn't want to watch. In the mean time my Oldest was streaming Netflix through his Playstation 3 and seemed to have a bunch of choices. He had split the cost of the subscription with a friend. I started to research the options for low cost content on CNET. I found I could stream Netflix and Hulu through my Xbox and the Playstation 3. Netflix was easy to stream but I would need third party software to get Hulu. The Netflix account was $8.99 a month and the software was $39.99. Both had two week trials. The person I had to convince was my lovely wife Lisa. I showed her what we had to choose from and she was impressed.

On January 2nd I fired the satellite company. I set up two TVs to receive streamed content. Purchased HD digital antenna's for all of the TVs and will recoup all of my costs in two months of no satellite bills. There has been a change in my children's viewing habits for the positive. They now choose the content and watching TV is now an event rather than a mind numbing ambition sucking ritual.