said by HiDesert:"This exercise doesn't count the fact that cable bills rise at about twice the rate of inflation."
Yeap, my 2.5 percent merit increase was just cancelled (hospital wide so no one at my place of work gets anymore money).
The bottom line is through channel bundling content holders like Disney can extort more money through carriage extortion. For those lucky enough to make enough to keep pace with the hikes, I'm happy for ya. Many wages are not keeping up and full time jobs are being replaced by PRN jobs in my field and wages in many cases are being driven down.
For me, I guess I can still afford it but decided a few years ago that the value is not there. That it was no longer worth paying a thousand dollars a year just to watch TV. OTA more then satisfies my occasional use of the TV.
I agree in some instances tough choices have to be made. I have positioned my family to live pretty well off of 30% of our income. The other 70% goes to investments, emergency funds and paying cash for large purchases. Even if we never received a raise for the next ten years we would be fine with the bills we have now (and no I don't have a high level position with a Fortune 500 company). I couldn't blame anyone but ourselves if we couldn't keep up with our bills. Become smart financially and the $150 cable bill becomes so much less a part of your misery.
