Cut back on your monthly cable or satellite bills

satellite TV dishHow many channels does your cable or satellite package give you?

I haven’t counted ours but it must be more than a hundred and to be frank, they’re mostly a load of old crap. Repeats, repeats and more repeats plus a constant stream of ancient stuff.

What’s the point of repeating old news quizzes? It seems crazy. And if I come across one more repeat of an episode of CSI I will probably scream.

The new stuff isn’t much better. While the BBC, Channel 4 and ITV come up with some superb new dramas and documentaries, things like The Only Way is Essex and Splash are unbelievably, horribly bad. I’d rather not have a telly than watch them, and soap operas are just as wince-making with all those scummy people being horrible to each other and poking their noses into each others’ business. Grim. If real life was like that I’d hurl myself off the nearest cliff. Awful.

Maybe I’m getting old!

Thankfully we only have the basic TV package. I’d be mightily dis-chuffed if we were paying more than the minimum for it. The problem is, every time there’s nothing on telly, which is a lot of the time, we end up buying a movie from Virgin movies on demand, and it soon stacks up.

Despite having zillions of channels to choose from we almost always end up watching BBC1, BBC2, BBC3, BBC4, Channel 4 and ITV 1, 2 and 3 and Discovery. A lot of the time we just switch it off and do something different instead, like reading or chatting.

I’d be perfectly happy to ditch the whole crazy deal and go back to Freeview, which had equal amounts of rubbish on board but didn’t cost us anything. The thing is, because it’s all tied up with our broadband and landline, it’s a pain in the backside to unravel.

If I could go back in time I’d stick with Freeview. I’d ditch the landline altogether – we never use it and the only people who call us on our home phone are our mums. And I’d track down the best value broadband, removing our household from the ‘package’ stranglehold. In our experiences packages are expensive and irritating and it seems mad to pay for a load of poor choices you just don’t want.

Rant, rant!

If you’re paying more than the minimum for TV channels you rarely if ever use, think about cutting back to the basics. Get rid of the excess channels and divert the cash you save back into your pocket.

Luckily the weather’s getting better and the nights lighter, which means we can get out and about after work instead of sitting on our backsides in front of the telly. Thank goodness for that. Instead of moaning there’s nothing on TV we’ll be out walking, hanging around in the garden and having picnics in the countryside or our local park. I can’t wait!

(Thanks to Sarej at www.sxc.hu for the free image)