Becoming a cord cutter: We were paying too much for cable

She told me the cable bill was too much. One-hundred and fifty bucks a month was a lot of bread. She was down for breaking up with cable, but she had conditions. We scribbled and schemed on little yellow notepads. We were going to be cord cutters.

I wanted to ravenously scour YouTube for Luther Allison and John Lee Hooker concerts so we could watch them on Friday nights while I sipped a beer or two on the couch.

She wanted her Nat Geo. She confessed an unabashed need for the ‘Real Housewives…’ and everything Bravo.

Damn, I was screwed.

I know you’ve been there, or you’re almost there right now. Listen friend, I don’t know where you live. I don’t know if you’re scraping by like me paycheck to paycheck. What I do you know is that I made my wife happy. I got her the channels she wanted and I’m saving her a whopping $66 bucks a month.

That sweet touch of cash can buy her some summer kicks (but it will likely go in the bank). It will bring our household $792 in savings in 2016. And that’s really a key thing when talking to your wife (or husband) about ditching cable. It’s about saving the money. Shrinking the nut. Dig our groovy, new Cable Cutter lifestyle.

It’s about sticking it to the cable company that’s been sticking it to you for years, whacking you with fees and loading up your screen every night with so many unwanted channels you’ve fallen into this zombie-like malaise of flipping, flipping and flipping through channels looking for SOMETHING to watch and finding nothing.

You’re paying somebody a couple grand a year for the privilege of doing that shameful nightly habit in the privacy of your own home. (You dirty bastard.)

Dude, break the cycle and join the tribe. I ran across Playstation Vue during a Google search, and found out that where I live, I could get 100 decent live TV channels for $45 per month with unlimited Cloud DVR storage. We tried a free seven-day trial on my PS3 that was tucked away in the closet, and before we made the leap, I upgraded us with an Amazon Fire TV box.

I got a HD antenna for about $25 for local channels and ditched our (rented) cable modem and bought a SURFboard modem, which got me faster speeds.

We don’t even subscribe to Amazon Prime, and we probably won’t anytime soon. I just wanted a box with an Ethernet port that ran PS Vue. Right now, the hardware options are limited for Vue. If you don’t have a PS3 or PS4, then you’ll need a Fire TV box or a Fire stick.

I had planned on getting a Fire stick for our second TV in the bedroom, but I ended up keeping things low-fi in there, and using what I had around house. I even made my own antenna after watching this video. There was no point in spending the extra cash. I fiddled around with the placement of my router to improve my WiFi reception. I also found this video to make a second antenna for local channels, and this video to hook up my PS3 to run off my television remote.

My wife is watching her Nat Geo, the Real Housewives are gleefully barking at one another while I write in my office. The picture is running so smoothly that sometimes I forget we ditched cable. And when I remember, I just smile.