cut the cable

Living behind the cutting-edge.

By Brad Beckstrom

There were 38 different types of cables and chargers in the box. Some of them were probably over 20 years old. Things like monster cables for stereo equipment, firewires from old hard drives, various USB cables and splitters, ethernet cables and about 10 different AC adapters from games, various peripherals, and crap from former cable providers. For the last several years, I’ve been at war with stuff, investing some time to simplify my life. I’ve recently kicked this into high gear. Kelly and I are playing the minimalist game. We will be giving away nearly 1000 things this month alone. I’m constantly amazed at how much crap a family of four can accumulate over the years. Sadly, some of that stuff ends up in a landfill, benefiting no one.

I’ll avoid these mistakes again. The best way to do this is by not replacing the things that we get rid of. I’ll take a hard look at cheap products that are built to be discounted then discarded. I’ll skip the next upgrade cycle on my mobile phone and my computer.

Why can’t more things work like our blender or the microwave? We’ve had both since 1996. Over the years we’ve been tempted to replace them with newer versions but we stuck with them, even repairing the blender once. It’s funny, we probably use these two appliances more than any of the things that have become obsolete. So, my theory now is, if it’s not being used regularly we can probably get rid of it and not replace it.

First world problems [Read more…] about Living behind the cutting-edge.

Is an Amazon Prime Membership worth it ?

11/15 by The Frug Leave a Comment

I recently visited a friend and he mentioned that he had Amazon Prime but hadn’t used it much. I’m not a big fan of subscription services, people often sign up then forget them, or don’t use them enough to see any value. I see all kinds of examples of this, fancy gold cards, Netflix, gym memberships, Costco, BJ’s, Sam’s, all kinds of web based music services, shopping clubs, cloud storage, home security, the list goes on. Don’t get me started on cable company add-ons, or any software that “requires” paid updates or monthly fees!

Yet, over the years, I’ve either considered or used every every type of service I’ve listed here. Every year I recommend making a hit list that includes every service or membership that charges a monthly or annual fee. Convert them all to annual totals so you can see how much you’re spending a year on the services, then sort them by the total. Take a close look at each service and how much you’ve really used it over the past year. Start a spreadsheet in Google Docs and each time you come across a monthly or annual fee drop it in there. There’ll be a few you forgot about. Example: Spotify $9.99 Month x12 = $119.88 yr.……

This is about the time of year that we get charged our $99 Amazon Prime renewal fee. With Amazon, it’s not only the annual fee I want to take a look at but also the money our family spends with them. Once you sign up for Amazon Prime, you can get hooked on some of the benefits like free two-day shipping on everything from paper products to textbooks to dog food. Amazon is also great for hard-to-find items like instant unsweetened steel cut oatmeal or other items you may want to purchase elsewhere but would have to pay shipping on. [Read more…] about Is an Amazon Prime Membership worth it ?

Curated for your viewing pleasure. Finding great films to watch without losing your mind.

03/15 by The Frug Leave a Comment

By Brad Beckstrom

Stop spending so much time in front of the boob tube and go outside. The boob tube was what my mom liked to call the TV. She was giving me some good advice and, getting me out of her hair all at the same time. I guess that advice stuck. I’d still rather be out doing something, anything than sitting in front of the TV.

If you live in the eastern half of the US, you know this winter has been brutal. Thunder snow, sideway ice storms, endless school closings, all around crap weather. Sometimes a great movie is just the ticket on an ice covered evening.

If I’m going to spend some time in front of the TV I’d rather not waste it on a bad movie. Problem is there are plenty of bad movies out there, you see them popping up on iTunes, Netflix and Amazon. Hey! New releases! Highly recommended for you! $ $3.99 special.All just sitting there waiting to suck.

On top of the general suckiness, there are literally thousands of these films in each genre for you to wade through, hoping that because something is popular that you’ll like it as well. If you add to that all of the movies available via different and separate providers like iTunes, your cable company, Netflix, Amazon etc. you could spend more time searching, than actually watching the film.

Even more annoying is that many of the services are pay-per-view. If I already have Netflix and Amazon Prime, I certainly don’t want to spend more money with iTunes, the cable company, or additional monthly subscriptions like HBO.

Flixter.com had a decent search setup for a while, but now through their efforts to monetize it, they have turned it into some type of overpriced online movie rental service and removed the most useful features like sorting by provider. Now I only recommend it for finding new releases in your local movie theater.

A new free solution has arrived. [Read more…] about Curated for your viewing pleasure. Finding great films to watch without losing your mind.

Why you’ll soon be paying zero dollars per month for high tech home security.

11/14 by The Frug Leave a Comment

Home Alarm Disruption — Scary Times for Established Players with Fees

By Brad Beckstrom

What is disruption? It’s when an established industry like eyeglasses, taxicabs, music is completely turned on its head by a new technology or a new way of doing things.

Usually this is very good for Frugs. Eyeglasses and prescription sunglasses drop from hundreds of dollars down to $75. A taxicab ride into town drops from $20 to $10 and comes with a tidy receipt, including a map of your journey sent to your phone from UberX. Music sounds better and, is unlimited, for a fraction of what we used to pay.

Whenever I see an industry about to be disrupted, I see opportunity to flex some frug muscles and get the word out. The next industry being disrupted…..

Home security.

The home security business is a 5+ billion dollar industry. The industry includes established players like ADT, FrontPoint, Brinks. Also, other major communications players have jumped into the game including Google, AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, and others.

The monthly monitoring fees are the bread-and-butter profits for these companies. Much like the cable or mobile phone industry, they are willing to install a high-tech home system, for a low price, but you’ll be on the hook paying anywhere from $30 to $200 a month or more, depending on the number of entries, windows, sensors, and keypads etc. in your home.

Cable companies and mobile carriers are jumping into this market because it’s a perfect fit for their model. They are very good at setting contracts up, raising prices while charging early termination fees for those who want out after their monthly monitoring gets too pricey.

The good news is this industry is about to be completely disrupted.

Breaking Bad on your Cable TV Bill with Curated TV

11/13 by The Frug 4 Comments

As a child, pre-cable, we had four flavors of television — ABC, NBC, CBS and some crazy channel on UHF 45 (ultra high frequency) called WBFF TV which later became Fox. Watching TV was a privilege, Saturday morning cartoons or an hour or two after homework during the week. And then on Sunday, some shared TV. The family would gather for Baltimore Colts games, 60 Minutes, some big Disney or Mutual of Omaha Special .

It all seemed very planned, almost curated. And it was free.

Then it got ridiculous.

Fast-forward many, many years. At one point,we had 3 HD cable boxes, HBO, Showtime and about 650 other channels. Our cable bill with high speed internet at one point exceeded $165 per month. We were paying $30 a month for the 3 HD boxes alone, In my informal surveys among some friends, when you add in premium channels, high-speed Internet, some of their bills exceed this. Enough was enough.

About those cable boxes. Don’t forget about the energy all this equipment uses. This article in Popular Science quoted a study pointing out that cable boxes are the biggest energy suckers in many homes, using more power than refrigerators! So, including electric bills, we were looking at a monthly expense of about $175 per month. If you were to invest that money, compounded at 7%, you would have approximately $30,275 after 10 years. Formula explained here. It was time to cut our dependence on cable TV.

Define how much TV you really need.

The first step in cutting your cable bill is defining how much TV really need. Turns out SuperK and I were watching maybe an hour and a half of TV per day. We’ve since decided to cut this back to about an hour per day. As our kids get older, they watch even less TV, but man do they suck down some serious bandwidth with phones, laptops and iPads. More on this project later.

Now it’s getting better – TV becomes entertainment through curation

So let’s say you really can get by with just an hour or two per day of TV. If you’re going to spend less time in front of the TV then start by making it quality time. Most news today is dominated by pointless fear mongering to chase ratings. Politicians spend most of their time crafting 15 second sound bites for CNN or the evening news versus actually doing their jobs. Trust me, this is an easy one to cut first. Then you can get rid of any paid subscription channels outside of what’s included with basic cable. When you subscribe to HBO and Showtime you’re paying for a lot of content you don’t actually watch, specially after you pare back viewing significantly. (PS, you’ll still be able to watch any of these premium shows on your schedule. I’ll show you how.)

Stop renting cable boxes

If you read this blog, you know that I hate monthly subscriptions. Paying $5 or $10 a month to rent standard or HD cable boxes seems like an especially ridiculous subscription. I was even offered a DVR rental by my cable company for $15 a month. The HD boxes and DVRs had access to HD movie rentals, so I’d be paying the cable company for the privilege of spending more money with them. What a scam.

I got rid of all the cable boxes. The first one was easy. I added a cablecard to our TIVO box. The second cable box, we replaced with my son’s Xbox, It has access to Netflix, FIOS and a bunch of other options we really don’t use that much. This basement TV is all gaming. For the third TV, which is very rarely used, we just plugged in a $49.00 Roku Box. The Roku box is a great solution because between a basic Netflix streaming account and an Amazon prime account that includes free streaming video, you have access to more TV than you could ever watch.

How to curate your content

Okay, let’s say you’ve gotten rid of your cable boxes, cut all premium programming and reduced your cable package to the bare-bones minimum. At this point you’ll be about $50-$70 lighter per month. You have a clean slate to to build your ultimate entertainment set-up on.

The three most powerful tools in a basic or no cable TV package household are.

Roku
TiVo
with basic cable card
Netflix and/or Amazon Prime

If you use Amazon, I recommend upgrading to Amazon Prime as you get access to over 41,000 movies and TV episodes included, all via the Roku box. If you supplement this with Netflix,(also on the ROKU box) you have access to just about every premium TV show available, on your schedule.

With this setup, or something similar, you can begin to search for the highest rated content, using Netflix and Amazon, or just asking some friends. Using a free website like Flixter, I can search for movies rated in the top 25% and filter the ones available on my streaming services. In my case, Netflix and Amazon Prime.

The one drawback that most people point out in scaling back cable is the loss of original content on HBO, Showtime and other pay channels. Back in the heyday of The Wire or The Sopranos, this would’ve been a problem. Now, with networks like AMC producing shows like Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and Walking Dead, as well as new original content from Netflix and Amazon, you’ll have more than enough to fill your curated TV time.

The great news is all of those HBO and premium channel shows usually become available via Netflix or Amazon one season after the launch of the new season. Sure, there’s a few shows that you’ll be a season behind on, but you’ll more than make up for it by the fact that you won’t waste any time on shows that don’t have rave reviews after their first season.

Cutting the cable completely

Believe me when I say I’ve looked into this, testing various HD antennas etc. This is still a long-term goal. However, now that I’ve gone to the most basic cable package, and I subtract the cost of high-speed Internet (alone) from my total monthly $99.00 Verizon FIOS bill, the discounted cable TV portion adds up to only $39/ month which is about what it’s worth.

Conclusion

Cutting your dependence on the cable company takes a good amount of upfront work but if you do the math and include what you save long-term, you’re really giving up very little, for some significant savings.

Old cable package versus new Verizon Fios.

	old	new

Cable TV	$59.95	$49.00
Premium bundle HBO Showtime others	$24.99	$0.00
3 HD Boxes	$29.85
Cable card		$4.99
High-speed Internet	$42.85	$38.00
taxes surcharges fees	$7.99	$7.32

Total	$165.63	$99.31

Savings less Netflix fees $600 per year. Amazon Prime Instant Video
is included with my prime membership.