It wasn’t long after my husband and I married that we decided not to pay for cable. This was mostly due to our tight budget, but we did manage to squeeze Netflix into our budget and enjoyed watching movies and finding new tv shows to watch.
We are now over seven years into our marriage and our home is still cable free. If you knew us in person, you would know that we are the type of people who love quoting movies and tv shows so it’s obvious that we stay up to date on our favorites. Here are some of our favorite ways to stay up to date with our must watch shows and avoid paying a chunk of money for cable.
Netflix
We began only receiving two DVD’s from Netflix at a time and then after a few years we upgraded our internet where we could also add in Netflix streaming. Netflix is always adding in new movies and television shows plus they are now creating their own content exclusively for Netflix.
Hulu
Hulu has more current shows in their line up. If you want to stay up to date with the latest episodes of your favorites, Hulu is most likely the place to go. They have some seasons in their entirety and other shows only have partial seasons which is my biggest complaint because if you get 3-4 weeks behind you can miss being able to watch all of the episodes…and, if you are like me, you simply cannot watch shows out of order! 
Amazon Prime
Amazon Prime isn’t just for two day shipping! You can also watch movies and television shows that are prime eligible for free with Amazon Fire TV Stick. For shows that are not prime eligible you can purchase for a small fee of about $1.50 per episode if you simply cannot wait. You can also rent movies on Amazon for about $3.99 per title with access to the movie for roughly 24 hours.
Local Library
Check out your local libraries DVD collection that you can check out for free. Our library even lets you request a DVD you’d like them to purchase. There is a time limit on the rental, but this is still a great resource for watching free movies.
Exchange with Friends
Another great way to watch movies on the cheap is to borrow movies and TV series for free from friends. Coming from a large family, I know that if you lend your DVD’s to someone that you might not get them back.
Before letting people walk out with any of our DVD’s, I ask them to hold said DVD up and let me take a picture of them with whichever disks they are borrowing. This helps you keep track of who borrowed what and, as an added benefit, when that friends says they never borrowed your DVD you can send them the picture. Once the DVD(s) is returned, I simply delete their picture from my phone.
Redbox
Redbox movies are a great alternative as well. You can sign up to receive text message from them for possible free movie rental codes. Just make sure to return movies after you are finished with them as they will continue to charge you per day for a month!
What about game day?
If you are worried about missing game day for your favorite team, you can always ask a friend or relative with cable if you can come over to watch the game. If they need a little convincing, bribe them with dessert! There are also options to watch certain games online so that is worth looking into at well.
In this day and age there are so many options other than cable. We have Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon in our house and still pay less than what our local cable company offers for their least expensive package.
What are some of your favorite ways to avoid paying cable fees?
