Living on a Shoestring

In the fall of 2009, my husband and I decided that we had to cut out our cable. It was about $130 for cable tv and internet, and frankly keeping the house was more important than what movie was playing on TV. We ended up getting DSL for about $20 a month and calling it good. We belonged to Netflix, so we figured we could get our movie fix that way.

And then I discovered Roku.

That Christmas we spent about $60 on a Roku Streaming Player as a gift to ourselves.

The Roku box allows us to stream Netflix onto our TV. It is enabled with wi fi, so we didn't even need to hard wire it into the wall. As a matter of fact, we can unplug it and take it into the other room.  Roku even has a number of free channels to choose from; Crackle has lots of great movies FOR FREE, with LIMITED COMMERCIALS.  This past spring I was also given an Amazon Prime Membership, which includes the streaming of a number of movies.  If we want to treat ourselves to a spur-of-the-moment new release, we can always rent one from Amazon (incidentally, if you keep your eyes peeled you can often get $5 Amazon on Demand credits to add to your account).

If you already own a PS3, Wii, or Xbox 360 you can stream Netflix as well. If you don't have the money to shell out for one of these, the Roku is a great alternative.

I do miss watching my Red Sox play; if I subscribed to MLB.com I could stream that on Roku as well. That's pretty much the only thing I miss about cable.  I do NOT miss the $130 price tag.

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