If you get TV from your local cable TV provider, you likely are paying over $230 a year in rental fees for their hardware. These fees bring in $19.5 billion in revenue for cable TV companies. After all, what’s a few (ever-increasing, never-ending) bucks to you the consumer?
What Cord Cutting Affords You as a TV Viewer
If you would cancel cable TV today, in the next year you would have enough money to pay for a year of Netflix ($95.88), a year of Amazon Prime ($99), and still have $36.94 to go toward an antenna like the Mohu Leaf for just $39.99. Or you could use your extra $36.94 to rent movies at Redbox, Amazon, iTunes, Google Play, etc.
We have yet to even look at how much money you would save by not paying for cable TV. On average, many cord cutters save $1,000 a year. This amount of savings would afford you all of the above-mentioned streaming services and antenna, plus it would leave you with over $800 to buy a set-top streaming box, get a new TV, or even take a vacation with your family.
More Hidden Fees: Internet Modem Rentals
There are other hidden fees that you can avoid. One of the big ones people face are modem rental fees. These fees average $10 a month, but some are as high as $12 a month. So you are paying $144 a year to rent a cable modem. Often you can find modems on sale for less than $100. Just make sure to contact your ISP to ask them what type of modems work on their networks. If you rented a modem for five years you paid $720 in rental fees on something that costs less than $100 in most cases.
Plus, if you were to upgrade your service or switch ISPs, potentially rendering your modem obsolete for yourself, you can always sell it and recoup some of your initial purchase cost.
Between cable TV boxes and Internet modems, the average subscriber could be paying as much as $1,870 over five years in rental fees alone.
So what are you waiting for? Ditch cable, buy an antenna, and start pocketing money every month!
