Does Cutting Cable Actually Save You Money?
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Over the past few years, many people have abandoned their traditional cable services in favor of a more internet-based media diet. These customers have given up on lengthy cable contracts and high prices for channel packages in favor of just getting a Netflix subscription for $10 per month.
Oh, wait, what’s that? Netflix costs $16 if you want to watch shows in 4K? Hmm, okay, well, that’s just the cost of doing business. But what if every show you want to watch isn’t on Netflix, won’t you need quite a few other streaming services, too? This is getting expensive again. Does cutting cable even save you money anymore?
Cable companies got a little out of control by the late aughts. Around the time that internet streaming was about to get huge, cable companies started increasing their prices dramatically. In many areas, your choice of cable provider is predetermined by your location. If you don’t like the handful of cable options you have, you’re just out of luck unless you want to use a satellite service.
This led to the conditions that sparked Netflix’s ascension from movie rental service to full-blown streaming titan. Once Netflix started letting people stream shows directly from their website, many people realized that this was preferable to paying upwards of $100 per month to get hundreds of channels, only to watch one or two of them.
In recent years, streaming companies have seemingly forgotten that affordability and convenience were the two factors that led customers to ditching cable. When most shows were split between Netflix and Hulu, it was easy enough to carry a few subscriptions and keep up with your favorite shows. However, that was only the introductory price – the streaming services needed to offer rock-bottom rates to disrupt the cable industry.
Now that streaming has basically already won, it’s able to start jacking the prices up. If you have Netflix, Hulu, HBO Max, Paramount Plus, and Amazon Prime, you’re going to be spending a comparable amount of money to what you used to spend on cable. That’s not exactly a deal! Now you can just watch shows on demand instead of waiting for them to air.
So, does cutting the cord really save you money these days? If you only have one or two streaming subscriptions, sure. But does anyone really stick to a single streaming service?
