Severing the cable cord!

One of the most challenging aspects of divorce is re-learning what your appropriate cost of living is and then staying within your means.  Post-divorce, I took a stance of "finances, while important, is back burner to my emotional healing".  I gave myself a free pass to not be judgmental on myself for impulse buying for the first several months.  I also gave myself a deadline for this nonchalant financial attitude, with the plan that I had to at least be tracking what I was spending by May and by June I had to actually have a budget laid down that was realistic.   For those of you that follow my Facebook stream, I'm sure you are wondering if I have a shoe budget?  (I do!)

As part of this budget establishing process, I took a hard look at the things I was spending money on to decide whether they were really providing the value that I was paying for.  One of the areas that quickly came to light as overrated was my cable bill to Mediacom.  I had high speed internet and cable through Mediacom at a price point of $121/month.  I'd speculate I watched about 30 hours of television from Jan-May, all network shows (DWTS, Scandal, Downton Abbey - can't miss 'em!)  It became pretty obvious that the part I most liked about Mediacom's service was not the cable television but the miraculous DVR box!

Time to remedy the budget and the electronics configuration, with a little help from Google...  After some internet searching, it appeared I had a few choices.  Options I considered:

1. build my own (requiring time and brain power I didn't really care to use up)
2. purchase a DVR with monthly subscription service (uh... no thanks, i'm trying to get rid of monthly bills, not replace them)
3. find a DVR without subscription

I opted for #3 and after researching I ended up getting the ChannelMaster DVR+.  This product was not cheap (although its dropped in price point since i bought mine).  However, it was the only DVR option I found that did NOT require a monthly service fee, which was the exact thing I was looking to eliminate!

Actual setup required some additional hardware to make the full system complete, namely a digital antenna and 1 TB hard drive to store overflow recordings (perhaps overkill since I've already professed I don't watch much tv...)

Total cost of system = DVR $300 + Antenna $30 + 1 TB Hard drive $65 = $395

Reduction in Mediacom bill?  $72 a MONTH.

I cancelled cable in June and bought all the equipment.  Sadly I only just recently got it all set up in my house (more driven by the fact that all my shows were on hiatus for summer, HA!)   So far it seems to be working well though and I'll be net even in another month.

Wonder if there is some sort of equivalent swap to reduce my shoe budget...??