Cutting the Cable

We are getting our financial life back on track after hubby's 14 month unemployment stint. He has a job now - a good one - but it's not near what he used to make. See, his former employer tempted him to move here by letting him not only keep, but make a bit more, of his California salary in the Midwest. This allowed us to buy our beautiful home on 5 rolling acres and me to leave the daily grind and find my part-time job. I was able to spend the income from my job solely on the dogs and doggie activities. It was a good run, but as it's been said, All good things must come to an end. Fortunately for us he was given a retirement package, which we lived off of as he searched for new work.
It took some time, but he's back and working again, and very happy at his new place of employment. But now we needed to have The Talk. One couples (at least the ones I know) don't really like to have - the Financial Talk. We went through our bills. We arrived at how much I needed to contribute towards our keeping us afloat. Ouch, that hurt. Gone are agility lessons, tracking lessons, obedience survived as did herding. Those days of campaigning anywhere I can are gone. But I digress.
Even with all that, we still needed a bit more trimming of the fat. But where was the fat? Oooooh, it's there. Our satellite service. Access to hundreds of channels. Do we like it? Heck yeah! Do we NEED it? *sigh*. No.
I must say I admire Erik's sacrifice. This man is a confirmed TV fanatic, and a lover of the Fox News network. This was a biggie for him. But he made the phone call, and BAM! It's gone.
We are down to only one working TV, and just the regular channels. I thought life would be miserable but you know what? I love it. The house is quieter. I didn't realize how much time we spent apart in the house, as I'd escape to other parts of the house to get away from the blaring TV. We discuss and arrive at compromises on what to watch, and we watch TV together. And really, there's nothing we HAVE to watch, so when there's spare time, it's spent doing other things. There's that reading thing. Or that listening to music thing. Or - imagine this - just talking! I didn't realize the full intrusion of TV into our lives and the impact it's made on our lifestyle. I'm really glad we've scaled way back.
We're doing just fine, thank you, going back to The Simple Life.