Just cancled Comcast!

I have till the end of the month to get a new ISP & basic cable/phone. Its motivational at least. I was going to dial back the services since KO was the only reason I had a premium service. But frankly I just decided to make a clean cut.

You should try Dish, it's a good company.

I took MsRNC off of my favorites. I will not watch this channel. Sorry Rachel.

Hit 'em where it hurts!!:thumbsup:

even if you spend 100 a month that is 1200 a year


to get to 250,000 you would need to live over 208 years and pay for that service since birth

Time is valuable. To exclude the effect of time on any calculation reduces the true impact.

Say cable is $70 per month. Now imagine you have two people are 18 and they will retire at 65.

Person A opts for cable and pays current rate for rest of his/her life.
Person B opts to save/invest the money they would have spent on cable.

Now lets assume a couple things.
Lets assume annual price increase for cable is only 2% a year. Lets also assume Person B earns only 6% yield on his/her money.

You are right if price of cable never went up over next 47 years it would "only" cost Person A $38,480 however that is a rather unrealistic belief. Even if prices go up only 2% annually (roughly half of inflation) Person A would spend $65,000 over the next 47 years.

Still Person B wouldn't just have $65,000 saved after 47 years. That would assume they never earned any yield on their money. If they earned 6% annually over next 47 years it would be $271,521.03. A conservative balance of stocks, bonds, and treasuries in the past has yielded >6%. So the "price" of a lifetime of cable is $271K when you include the opportunity cost.

Now some people will say you can't earn 6% in a blended portfolio so lets look at an ultra conservative plan. The average yield on basket of treasuries over last 5 decades is roughly 3.8%. Say Persons B invested in CD and savings bonds and then (as balance grew) moved into treasury bonds. Over next 47 years that yielded only 3%. Value of portfolio would be $123,946.32 after 47 years.

Time is valuable. Einstein said compounded interest is the most powerful force in the universe. To look at price statically misses the larger cost; opportunity cost.

would be in place



Also, in light of things like Google TV, Hulu and Netflix it is my opinion that Cable and Satellite TV will be obsolete in 20 years


Nice work with the math though. Irrelevant but it still is a nice piece of work.





You did say "save" not "earn if you invested the savings"

:fistbump:

Way to go! :thumbsup:

never miss cable premium service. http://roku.com

Thank you.

now with Direct we have been watching Keith and Rachel

Now - no more Keith

I live in a condo building that was never wired for cable, but has satellite. When we first moved in we decided to get nothing, because there is so little on tv worth watching. But then the association decided to purchase the satellite service in "bulk" for the building and attach the fee to our monthly assessments. We pay $27 / mo. for basic satellite. It's DirecTV (a Murdoch corporation!).

Earlier this year the condo board, on which I was sitting, did a study to see if we should change to another provider: the only choices were Comcast and retain the DirecTV. I argued against Comcast for a number of reasons (not mentioning my impending fear of the NBC merger). We decided to stick with what we have for now. I'm glad. Even though it sucks to have to pay money to DirecTV, at least I don't have to watch Fox News at all (I truly never have seen it, even once: except on clips on Jon Stewart). We get MSNBC just fine on it, and they weren't responsible for firing Olbermann. All's well that ends well, I guess ... at least in the imperfect world of tv providers.

... and since we still like much of what cable offers (not most, but enough), I've stayed with Verizon FiOs. This was a bundled internet and phone package.

But, should the powers that be drive me elsewhere, I'm always looking,

Meanwhile, GOOD FOR YOU!

We have upstairs & downstairs service. The basement service stopped working. Moved the upstairs receiver to the basement & it didn't work either. Moved the downstairs receiver upstairs & it worked fine. So the problem was with the cable.

Dish was going to charge us $100 to come out & fix the cable. They said the receiver was ours & that we were responsible for any repairs or replacements. I explained that OUR equipment was working fine, that it was THEIR cable that was not working. Too bad - $100 anyway. Fuckers. We canceled the basement service, which was only a few bucks a month. I figure Comcast isn't any better & I'm just not up for some service guy traipsing through my house to get basically the same big corporate attitude. Besides, we watch mostly movies/series from Netflix.

BTW, with Dish's America 120 (or whatever) package, you get Fox News, but not MSNBC. And of course you get the Corporate News Network. :eyes:

I have a bitchin' internet/long distance deal through Qwest.

I've been without cable for the past decade and haven't missed it in the least. I can see anything online.

If it's important, I usually hear about it.
Granted, sometimes I hear about it even if it's crap.
But at least I'm not paying for it.

I haven't given them a dime in over a decade and it is very satisfying.

and still have wireless internet. I don't have that luxury. :( But I am going to talk with my roommate about at least changing over to Dish TV when she gets back in town.

...but they wouldn't go away. They left the service up for months and kept harassing me on the phone to come back, offering me three months of free service as an incentive, sending me bills of less than a dollar, and all sorts of other crap.

I finally went to their local office to complain and later found out the clerk I'd talked to had entered my account as "moved," that was from a Comcast salesperson who came to my door and was surprised I was still there. I'm guessing the clerk was under pressure to keep his stats up and a customer who moved away wasn't counted against him.

The tech support and customer service has been great for me.
The only complaint about dish network is their recent "We Dish You A Merry Christmas" commercials, and the fact that they did not wish me a happy hanuka.

Congrats to you! We're in the process of evaluating our options and we intend to dump Comcrap ASAP.

How will they ever send KO his 14 million dollars over the next 2 years?

I've always hated their crap customer service and inability to keep their promises ("show up late to an appointment? $20 credit on your bill!" yeh that never happened once and they were ALWAYS late). I was very pissed when they bought MSNBC but this is insane. I'm happy to show them the door.

:knock on wood:

What is needed in order to never need cable...

What we need to ditch cable and how much it will cost

Replace 2Wire modem with Actiontec - DSL Modem with 802.11g Wireless Router and 4-Port Ethernet Switch from Amazon.com ANNUAL COST 1ST YEAR ANNUAL COST 2ND YEAR
BestBuy Amazon.com
Cost 89.99 74.24 One time cost 74.24


2 or 3 Roku Players to stream Netflix & Hulu Plus
Basic HD player XD Player
Cost 59.99 79.99 One time cost 239.97

OTA Antenna to get local channels (news and major chanells ie ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX) without cable
Winegard FreeVision FV-30BB HDTV Antenna Terk FDTV1A Flat Digital Omni Directional Amplified Indoor Antenna (Black)
Cost $36.99 $54.24 One time cost 110.97
Might need one for each tv Question if it works for all tv's

Internet access to TV and Movies
Netflix Hulu Plus
Cost 7.99 7.99 Per month Per Month 103.87 103.87

Instead I won't watch MSNBC. Sorry Rachel and Cenk. I never liked O'Donnell so that won't be any loss.

Don't watch much tv 'news' anyhow.

That's Speaking Truth ($$$) To Power!!!!!!!!!!

I hope thousands do the same.