Half Of People Consider Cable TV Essential

[jeffrey]

A KeyCorp survey has found that 55% believe they are disciplined savers even though 80% save less than 5% of their income. The report also found that 42% save less than 2% of their income while 24% don't save anything at all.

"It's clearly a case of people believing they're doing better job of saving than they actually are," said Andy Will, director of Consumer Product Management. "The best intentions are not resulting in the best behavior."

Insufficient income, debt and spending habits are the main reasons which prevent people from saving as much as they would like. In addition, the survey found that people consider the following as essentials:




Cable / Satellite TV - 49%
Cell phone - 46%
High-speed Internet access - 44 percent
Entertainment (movies, books, dining out, etc.) - 32 percent.
Big screen TV - 6%
Gym membership - 6%

"What struck me about the survey," said Will, "is that you have more than two-thirds of the people saying they'd like to save 10 percent or more of their income. Almost 90 percent say they can't save what they want because they don't make enough or are too far in debt. And yet, when you look at what people consider essential to their lifestyle - well, it leads us to believe there's some untapped potential for people to reach their savings goals. That may be the silver lining in this survey."

When asked which items people would give up first to save more money, 79% indicated the gym membership while 74% said the big screen TV.

People also believe that saving money is difficult. The survey found that approximately 70% of the people surveyed believe saving money is harder than losing weight, finding love or a good job, raising children, eating healthy, and maintaining a work/life balance. Over half (51%) said saving money was more difficult than getting along with their families.

"One thing I want to stress is that saving money doesn't have to be so painful, and that there's much to gain," said Will. "More people have saved their way to becoming millionaires than have earned their way. Also, setting some money aside is the single best thing you can do to inoculate yourself against the potential negative effects of life changing events such as job loss or unforeseen medical expenses."

[cercis]

*I* would give up cable, but DH won't. We don't drink, we don't have expensive hobbies (or any hobbies, I guess), we don't smoke, etc. To him, it's just a hobby. I think it's an expensive hobby, but the bill includes my cable internet, so it's hard to argue too much.

[Razzy]

We have basic cable and it really is main form of entertainment. We go to the movies bout once a year we rarely rent movies so most of our time is spent at home. If we did not use are cable then we would not be able to justify the cost we spend on it.

[lvhocken]

How crazy! The only reason we have any form of pay TV in my household is because we get absolutely no television reception without it. Given the option, I would give up TV altogether. It wastes time and we are constantly bombarded by advertisements which cause us to want to buy more stuff, wasting hard earned money on junk we don't need, plus all of this extra crap takes up space. I would say any form of TV is a luxury, but that's just me.

We have DSL instead of having long distance telephone service, so we use it to communicate with people that we don't contact via phone and I'm pretty sure it ends up costing less ... we pay bills online, talk to long-distance friends and family, plus I'm a student so I use it to take online classes, saving me gas money and wear and tear on the vehicle. In our case I would say it is somewhat necessary only because it saves money in other areas.

Books and magazines can be borrowed from the local library, so that is an unnecessary expenditure. I pretty much always borrow a book I'm considering purchasing to see if it's worth the money. If it's a novel, I don't need to buy it because I already read it. If it's a cookbook or something like that I often find that I only would have used a couple of items in the book, so I copy them myself and save the money.

I exercise at home, but I do find it interesting that there are considerably more people who feel that cable TV is a necessity than a gym membership. It's more important to keep up on the latest shows than to be healthy? I'll bet most of these people also say they don't have time to exercise.

My response has gone off on a bit of a tangent, so I should end it now.

Leah

[Razzy]

We too get lousy T.V. reception without cable. As for advertisements I don't pay much attention to them because they don't represent the type of life I lead and who wants to pay full price for something anyway???

Just my 2 cents.

Razzy

[cercis]

I get "FitTV" as part of my cable. We do yoga and an aerobic show off of it. It doesn't pay for the cable (I mean, really, a yoga DVD is $13 at Costco).

But, it's an example of how we can use the cable to stay healthy.

[lisajane]

FitTV do they have that in Canada?

I do consider TV essential but just a basic package. Sometimes it's actually worth it to pay the $1.00 per station you want instead of $40 for every station under the moon which half are sports or something which I don't care about at all.

We have BPM tv which has like Dance instruction on it and other things like Discovery which is part of a basic package for which I can't live without.

I used to like the Learning channel, but now it seems like the marriage, baby, and surgery channel.

[cercis]

We don't have the option to get a basic package and then pay for individual channels (believe me, I'd do that if I could).

I don't know if FitTV is in Canada. It's a cable channel. I think it's owned by the same company as DIY, etc.

[lisajane]

You guys sound like you have good channels I don't even think we have DIY network.

Rogers cable offers that, I don't know about StarChoice or BellExpressVu for Satillite though.

I want good TV back. Grrr.. argg...

[Razzy]

I don't like half the channels we get but the channels we do like we watch often. There are channels that I watch and would be lost without if we did not have them.


Razzy

[billybob]

Cable is waaay too expensive where I live. It would cost upwards of 60/month just for cable, without internet. So, instead of that, I just go with the stations I get, and I subscribe to NetFlix- which is 19.99/month.

[brandondrury]

Cable is waaay too expensive where I live.

I'd bet it's this way everywhere. When people ask me how they can save more money, I always tell them to get more hobbies. Get into playing tennis or volleyball (and take care of your fitness too) for basically free.

Boredom is expensive. I find TV to be boring 99% of the time.

Brandon

[Luv2shop]

I could give up cable in a heartbeat. My husband can't live without it. The cheapest I could get my cable bill down to is $85. That is digital w/ no premium channels ( 3 boxes). We didn't have cable when we were little and we managed fine.

[brandondrury]

I've noticed that our least productive hobbies seam to cost the most.

Brandon