Financial Planning

The average monthly cable bill is $43. That’s $516 per year. It doesn’t sound like much, but if there’s anything we know about money, it’s that a little money over a long period of time is actually a lot of money. Time compounds money — and TV bills are no exception.

How to Save ,000

Supposing that the cable money was invested cautiously with a return of 6% per year, the end result would be $86,000 after 40 years. In other words, your TV costs you at least $86,000 over your lifetime. That’s a guaranteed extra source of money and savings — regardless of how much you use the TV, because the expense is relatively static. Plus, if you have satellite, it’s even worse — an extra $100-200 per year.

Bottom line: Most people  give up hundreds of thousands of dollars for the sake of subscription TV.

Of course, if the amount of pleasure/helpfulness one gets from the TV is worth the money, then that’s perfectly fine. But are you getting that much profit from the spending? If not, it might be in your best interest to completely reconsider the TV.

How to Make a Million Bucks

To understand the real cost of a typical TV habit, think of the time spent in front of the tube in terms of money. The average person spends 4 hours per day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks per year. The minimum wage in the US is $6.5. Going by that, TV habits soak up $9,500 worth of time every year. That means over the course of 40 years, typical TV habits cost $370,240. That’s without interest.

With just 6% interest, then typical TV habits cost $1,518,425 — in time alone. That means if you found something (researching investments, becoming a freelancer in some field, making your own website and putting ads on it), you’d make a million bucks over the next 40 years.

Watching TV is literally costing you hundreds of thousands of dollars — if not millions. The sad thing? “There’s nothing on.”