How to Cut Cable and Save/Medicare/Social Security Update

This week Bill Monty guides you on how to save money by cutting the cord. Plus, we get caught up with some subjects that have been hanging and dangling including the final (sort of) answer to the social security/Medicare payment question.

Please join us and remember to let us know what you think at Billmonty04@gmail.com or on our Facebook page, Bill Monty's Guide to Getting Older.

And we'll see ya on the flip side.

NOTE: Bill Monty's Guide to Getting Older has no financial/business relationship with any product mentioned in this podcast. Products mentioned are based on usage by the host and his personal experience and does not constitute any recommendation nor liability.

Chapters

• 0:07 Navigating Life and Social Security Benefits
• 10:52 Streaming Services for Cable Cord Cutting
• 18:19 Cutting the Cord

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:07

Hello and welcome to another episode of Bill Monte's Guide to Getting Older. So this episode is catching up is hard to do because that's what we're going to do. We're going to try and catch up on several things here that kind of been dangling since we started the podcast. Trying to catch up on several things here that kind of been dangling since we started the podcast. Also, to those of you who reached out or who supported us with our episode last week on my reminiscing about Jimmy Buffett, thank you, your kindness is appreciated.

Speaker 1: 0:46

Still kind of reeling from that one and still kind of amazed that the impact of someone who you never met, the impact of their death, has had on me. Can't really quit thinking about it in a way and I don't know, maybe I just thought Jimmy was going to live forever. He just seemed to have that life and all that kind of stuff. I saw someone post on a Buffett fan site that now they understand how Elvis fans felt and I guess I kind of get that. You know I was an Elvis baby, so I was born and was a little boy and I remember I just loved Elvis until those four lads from Liverpool showed up and then Elvis kind of went into the background. So, while it was tragic when Elvis died, I was one of those who just kind of like, really, you guys are making pilgrimages to Graceland every year. Now I kind of get it. You know, I sort of understand it, and I certainly have been diving more into Jimmy Buffett's albums and revisiting some that I hadn't listened to in a while in the music and so working my way through it. You know, a great loss and gee, all of the tributes that came in from all of the musical artists and other artists all over the world, people talking about all the times he was on TV or movies that you just never thought about. Or contributed his music to films like FM and Rancho Deluxe. They did the soundtrack for the movie Hoot which he produced and appeared in. He was in episodes of the new Hawaii Five-0. He was in the movie Cobb about Ty Cobb. So yeah, I kind of forgot all those over the years. But rest in peace, jimmy, still listening to your music and we will party on responsibly in your memory.

Speaker 1: 2:33

Want to also pick up on our conversation about social security. So, if you're unfamiliar with this, if you're new to the program, and I know, thanks to actually the Jimmy Buffett episode. We have a lot of new listeners, a lot of new people with us, so I want to refer you back to episode one. We talked in depth about Social Security. Out of that, someone had contacted me and asked if I knew the answer to the question If you're going to start collecting your Social Security but you're already paying for Medicare, that quarterly payment, how do they know to go ahead and start taking it out and what happens if you've already paid it? And did a lot of research and couldn't find a quick answer. So here we are, all these weeks later, and last week or the week before actually, I finally was able to make contact with someone at Social Security and just because I want to make sure that it's really clear, this is straight from the horse's mouth I'm going to read you a transcript of the chat that I had with this person because, again, actually getting a hold of someone very hard to do, someone very hard to do.

Speaker 1: 3:45

So I wrote to, I got into a live chat with someone who I will I will, no, I'm not going to give his, his name but started out trying to be very helpful and I feel at some point we just got tangled up in bureaucratic nonsense and never really got a straight answer, but did get an answer to this question. So if you are also in that situation where you're paying for Medicare right now because, again, if you pay for Medicare but you're not collecting social security yet you pay quarterly so you right now you're dropping a little bit under $500 every three months for your Medicare and when you start taking Social Security they take it out. And the question again had been if I'm already paying and let's say I, you know I pay the quarter and the first month is taken care of, but now next month they're going to start taking Social Security out or taking the payment out of my Social Security, what happens to that two months? So, without further ado, here we go. Uh, thank you for contacting medicaregov live chat. My name is verify your first and last name, which I had already done prior to this. I always wonder why they ask you on these chats and everything you have have to give you have to sign in, you have to give your name, some identifier like your social security number or you know email or something like that and then the person who comes in never seemed to have had access to that information at all. So my question when you start getting social security benefit checks, your Medicare premium? I'm sorry, this is the reply. When you start getting social security benefit checks, your Medicare premium will be deducted from your Social Security benefit check the month you start receiving your Social Security benefit checks Any overpayment during the next direct billing refund cycle.

Speaker 1: 5:36

That's the statement Any overpayment during the next direct billing refund cycle. Would I be able to help with anything else? So I wrote what does that mean? Any overpayment during the next direct billing refund cycle? It means any overpayment will be refunded something he neglected to put into the previous statement during the next direct billing refund cycle. Okay, so theoretically, if my first month to collect is in February of 2024, in January can I just pay one month instead of the three months? The reply it is up to you how you pay your premiums which is kind of a funny reply because I actually never saw that on the site that you can just make that choice for yourself.

Speaker 1: 6:19

With that said, partial payments are not recommended because they could result in loss of coverage. With that said, partial payments are not recommended because they could result in loss of coverage If you paid the full quarterly payment and some of that is deducted from your social security benefit check. You would be refunded any overpayment during the next direct billing refund cycle. So I asked okay, my next payment, let's say, is due end of September. Can I just start paying one month now, or must I always pay three months at a time, which is a bit of a financial hardship? Right now the reply I can't tell you how to pay your premiums. All I can tell you is that partial payments are not recommended because they could result in loss of coverage.

Speaker 1: 7:12

At this point I realized we were kind of in a circle that was never going to end and I thanked him for his time. So here we go. We don't know the answer to the question that we asked at this point. I mean we do in an offhanded way. People would say Bill, you're really nitpicking here. Because he did say if there was an overpayment it would be, they would refund it back. And I would say I believe that only because I in my work I have had communications with many seniors who have been trying to get a refund from Social Security and I have seen in the letters that when they refund money and they claim it's by law they can only refund a certain amount at a time. Refund a certain amount at a time. So, let's say, the amount they owe you back is for you know, one month, which right now is. I'm trying to think what is it? $164.90, I think, is the monthly payment right now. So they owe you $164.90. That doesn't mean next month you're going to get $164.90. Perhaps it does based on this conversation, but again, from what I've seen, they could pay you back $18 at a time, each month. So that's the answer that I received. This is after a lot of work trying to get to this answer.

Speaker 1: 8:50

I ask you, my friends, if you know differently, if you have been in this situation. I would love it if you could reach out to me BillMonte04 at gmailcom, billmonte04 at gmailcom and let me know if this has been your experience, or had you gone through this, and was that refund immediate, the next month, or how did it work? We want to keep this conversation going to make sure that we're clarifying as best that we possibly can. The next thing that I want to cover on catching up early on we had talked about, you know, it's tough right now financially. Financially, you know, with inflation, the way it is. I keep reading that it's getting better, but I know it's not getting better for me and it's not getting better for a lot of people that I know, because the cost of everyday living is just getting to be so much, and so you, you're at a certain point where you just have to start cutting things out. Well, I would say to you that one of the things you can live without, whether you know it or not, is cable.

Speaker 1: 10:05

This was a conversation that went on in our house for a couple of years. I wanted to do it, probably four years ago. My wife was hesitant. How am I? You know she loves the Hallmark channel how am I going to watch the Hallmark channel? And we would go through the explanations and stuff. So here is Bill Monty's brief guide to cutting the cord, and we will get into that right after this quick break. Hi, bill Monte here asking you to please remember to let us know what you think about what's happening with the program at BillMonte04 at gmailcom or by joining us on the Facebook page.

Speaker 1: 10:52

Bill Monte's Guide to Getting Older. It's a behind-the-scenes peek at what's going on and I'd like you to share your thoughts about what's happening. What would you like to see or hear more of or less of in our programs. We'll see if we can accommodate. We appreciate you listening and we will see you on the flip side. Welcome back, my friends.

Speaker 1: 11:21

So we were talking about cutting the cable cord and, yes, I know it can be scary, but here's how to do it painlessly and I'm going to tell you right off the bat what's great about it. So if you decide to do this, well, first thing you should do is not get rid of your cable until you're sure you like this option. So try it out before you contact your cable provider to see if and cancel. But I think you're going to like it. Here's why you're not going to really miss anything.

Speaker 1: 11:52

So the way that I did it and this is what works for me and for us, and we'll talk about the other options too is first I went and bought some antennas Remember the old-fashioned antennas for the TVs so that I could get the local channels. Because when I started doing this, getting local channels through an app was not possible, was not possible. So if I wanted to watch CBS, nbc, abc, fox, pbs or the offshoots of some of those channels which are like Cozy TV or Me TV or something like that Antenna TV, then you had to have that, and I still use them. They are not as effective as they used to be. So you're going to see things like range of 30 miles, 45, 45 miles, 50 miles, 70 miles. Here's the thing unless you go to the trouble of actually installing them outside of your house, you're going to have trouble if someone walks by your house, you're gonna like the signal is gonna break up. If you don't, like, once a month, go in and search for channels, you're going to find that some channels seem to get weaker at different times of the day. But you have, you're going to have to put it somewhere near a window that's what I have found and you're going to have to put the direction. Now the funny thing is that, uh, so I live in, you know, uh, in the fort lauderdale area and with our antenna placement, the way it faces, instead of getting most of the feed from Miami, we actually get better feed from West Palm Beach at certain times. So that's kind of weird. Right After that, you really have to decide before you do this, what is it you like to watch, and that's going to decide what apps you get.

Speaker 1: 13:36

So, for us, one of the first things that we had to do is figure out how my wife was going to watch Hallmark Channel. We first got an app called Friendly F-R-N-D-L-Y, which had a good range of shows, and one of the positive things about it was it had all three Hallmark channels. So she was going to be happy. We already had Netflix and we had Prime, because we are subscribers for Amazon. So what was it going to be after that? So currently and the reason we did this was we were our cable provider, who we also got Wi-Fi through Our bill was in the range of like $140 a month and that was, as you know, some promotional thing, right?

Speaker 1: 14:24

So you know, when you sign up, they'll give you this for a year. You can't get out of you. If you cancel before a year, they're going to charge you blah, blah, blah, and then they up it to the regular price and they don't give you any warning. And if you want to try and get it back to the other price, you have to call them. You have to wait on line, wait on hold. You have to get into some kind of negotiation with some poor call center agent who doesn't have the authority to do anything except try and convince you to stay at the higher price. Well, one month it showed up and our bill went from $140 something to over $200. And that was it. I was just done and I said we're going to try this, let's just try this, and we hate it. We can always go back, because when we go back they'll give us a better price anyway, because they're going to send us all this stuff saying please come back to us and we'll give you this special deal, but we're still, at the end of that year, going to be in the same boat. And what I like about this was you can decide you want an app, but there's no contract. So if you want, let's say, to watch football on the NFL app, okay, well, you don't have to have it for the entire year, when football is only around between September and you know, whenever the Super Bowl is, you know what are you going to have the NFL app for the rest of the time for you can just stop it and then pick it up again when football season starts. Or let's say you're a fan of a special show or something. Anyway, you're not tied to that year contract, you know. So you can cut it off.

Speaker 1: 15:51

So after we got friendly, we were. So we were watching Netflix, we were watching stuff on Prime. Then we picked up what was then at that time called Paramount it became Paramount Plus after that and Hulu, and each one was around $4.99 a month. So you still have to keep your Wi-Fi, which is, you know, in our case was $50 a month, and so now we're up to about, I think Netflix is what it was $12.99 when we started, might be $14.99 now. We're still under $100, way under $100.

Speaker 1: 16:30

And we've got a wide variety of shows that we can watch. We discovered an app called Philo which has like 170 channels, that is $22.99 a month and that covers almost everything you'd want to watch from cable, except for TBS and TNT. There must be some kind of lock on TBS and TNT because you don't see those in any of these. So, and since then we've acquired, you know, we have Disney Plus and we picked up HBO, which became HBO Max, which just became Max, and everything, and that's a good channel for like some shows and it has a wide and understand. When we started with this it was just like HBO, and now it's like HBO and Discovery Channel and this channel and that channel. So they're starting to bundle all these other channels in. So you know and we're still at this point even with what we have way under the even hundred and forty dollars we were paying minimum and at any time we can get rid of those apps and reduce our bill.

Speaker 1: 17:35

If we want the other way, you can do this. If you want access to your live channels but you don't want to do antennas, that doesn't work for you is there, are. You can get some services like DirecTV, which no longer involves a satellite, from what I understand, or YouTube TV, fubo, if you're more of a sports-oriented person, I believe and Sling TV, which has some nice packages and they include your local programming, but you're going to be paying a little bit more. So something like YouTube TV, I think right now is $75 or $80 a month, and I think DirecTV is probably about the same. But again, if you don't like it, you're not tied into a year contract. So that's what I suggest you do.

Speaker 1: 18:19

This is a really quick way to just get some money back in your pocket. If you're feeling crunch time and when things start getting a little bit better and hopefully that's really soon all you have to do is just go back and you can just start and activate the one that you want, the app that you want. Uh, that's my advice on cutting the cord and, uh, I think you'll enjoy it. I would. If you are someone who is still with cable and afraid to do this, I'd love it if you reached out to us and just told us your story. Uh, and especially if you go ahead and take our advice and and cut the cord and try this, we'd like to know how you like it or or how you don't like it, and you know you want to curse me out because I gave you bad advice and you actually took it.

Speaker 1: 19:02

I'm going to go back to what I said in the very first episode too, folks. Hey, I'm not an expert, I'm just giving my opinion on this show. Right, I know a lot about a little and I know a little about a lot, so it's just all based on my experience and I'd like to pass it on to you, if I possibly can. That will wrap it up for this episode of Bill Monty's Guide to Getting Older. I would like to leave you with this thought Jimmy Buffett was. I always considered him the Mark Twain of our time, and now I find out that, after his passing, many people did. Mark Twain once said wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been, and Jimmy used to quote that also. So I hope you get a lot of wrinkles from a lot of smiles, my friend, and I hope you take care of yourself. We will catch you on the flip side, remember, be kind.