How To Live Without Television - Part II

Glorious Part I of Stephanie’s “How To Live Without Television”

I’m sitting in my living room, a cautious eye on the Time Warner guys that have come out to my house to deliver what I refer to as ”the demon signal” (aka cable). I’m not a giant fan of cable to begin with, but Time Warner and I have a torrid past to boot, so I basically loathe the company. But I’m being polite to the install guys, because, hey, it’s not their fault. Also, it wasn’t my idea to put cable in this house.

But the real reason I’m giving you up-to-the-minute updates on my cable installation is to share the details of a rather odd piece of paper that was placed on my dining room table - the work order.

Installation and service fee: $72.80

Whaaaaaaaaaaat? Lame.

Monthly service: $61.56

…

Now, I’m not here to tell you what entertainment you should or should not put your money into. But I’ll run the numbers: if instead of getting cable, my family took that installation fee and invested it, and added that $61.56 every month, and got 8% returns… we’d have $36,849.02 after just 20 years.

I’m just sayin’.