JD at Get Rich Slowly has decided to switch to basic cable after crunching the numbers on his monthly bill to see how much it cost them to watch TV. He’s not the only one. John Zeratsky bid adieu to Comcast last September and Eric Olson got rid of cable last August. (I just found out they both work at FeedBurner. Perhaps it’s company policy.)

We had basic cable with Comcast for a few years, and in order to cut costs decided to buy a receiver and get rid of cable altogether. It’s been an easy transition, since I barely watched TV to begin with. My wife likes to watch “Gilmore Girls” and fortunately we get that channel for free over the air, so we don’t miss cable at all.

I enjoy reading about others who are cutting their monthly costs, having gone through the same process myself. What I like best is that instead of just reducing our cable bill, we got rid of it completely. Additionally, instead of paying for Netflix, we watch movies for free by using the library. We’ve never gotten TV shows from the library, but that might be an option if there’s a show we want to watch. My wife informed me that she got a few seasons of Alias from the library. Apart from the one time cost of two TV tuners (one for upstairs, one for downstairs at $25 each), we don’t pay anything to watch movies or TV.

Another cost-cutting measure I’m exploring is to stop paying for online bill pay at Wells Fargo, as well as to increase the interest earned on money sitting in our bank account. Each month our money sits in the account earning virtually no interest for a few weeks until it’s used to pay the bills. My plan is to move our money into a high interest account (we already have an account with HSBC which is earning 5.05%, 6% on new money until April 30th and it has a free bill pay service) so our money will be working for us while it’s sitting there.