Originally Posted in July of 2007

Mrs. Frugal and I don’t have a T.V. When I tell people this, the usual response is, “Why? How do you live like that?”

There are several reasons we don’t have a T.V. One is the cost savings ($60 per month in cable bills and we don’t have a T.V., so we’d have to shell out $600-1,000 for a good LCD).

Another is the space. We don’t really know where we’d put a 30″ screen, and so…well…we haven’t gotten around to it.

The third reason is the sensory overload. When you go without T.V. for several months (over half a year and counting), when you finally watch it at someone else’s house, the screen and sound give you sensory overload. The commercials are loud and annoying (I know Tivo skips through them, but what if you watch live T.V.?), and even the shows seem to be screaming at you in order to keep your attention.

The final reason we don’t have a T.V.: we don’t really have the time for it. We’re too busy wasting our time doing other things like talking with each other, reading, surfing the internet, blogging, and balancing our checkbook.

There is one show we enjoy watching: American Idol. But for that, we go to my parents’ house when it’s on. If the show isn’t worth driving 10 minutes to go watch, the show probably isn’t worth watching (for us).

We aren’t people who are stuck up and think that we’re elite because we don’t have a T.V. Television has had some wonderful shows that I’ve loved over the years.  What’s different about not having a T.V. is that it causes you to really think about each show you watch one-by-one. If we want to watch a video, we watch one on our laptop on the bed. We have some shows on DVD, and we watch them, too.

UPDATE: APRIL 2009

We moved out of that apartment after about 18 months and bought a home. We didn’t get a TV until Mr. Frugal’s sister gave us an old, 27″ TV. (The label on the back says it was manufactured in December of 1997.)

We don’t have cable, but we have a collection of DVDs that we watch and occasionally rent a DVD or borrow one from a friend.

It works for us and we don’t miss cable at all.