Q: I have been hearing a lot about younger folks who are cutting the cord. What I see online seems to be mostly about TV’s and streaming, but I want to cut the cable entirely and get rid of my cable package. Not sure if I want to give up my land line (in case of storms) but everything else could go. What do I need to do?

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A: Generally when you hear people talking about “cutting the cord,” they are referring to canceling their cable television service. The most popular approach is to cancel your cable TV and just watch stuff online.

You can get a ton of the shows that are on cable television online. Two of the most popular ways to watch TV shows online are Netflix and Hulu. Both cost around $8 a month each, and you can watch them on almost any device you can think of (Windows PC, Mac, iPhone, iPad, Nexus 7, Galaxy Tab, Amazon Fire, any Android phone, an XBox, a Playstation, a Wii or Wii U, any internet enabled DVD or Blu-Ray player, Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, Chromecast, etc.).

Netflix and Hulu won’t get you every show, unfortunately. Networks and cable channels often have their own web sites and mobile apps which are the only place you can watch their stuff. Some of them, ironically, require you to have a cable subscription to watch their shows online. You’ll probably have to kiss most of those shows goodbye.

If you’re thinking about dropping your cable internet as well and switching to DSL or wireless internet in an attempt to save money, you have to be careful. Cheaper internet services are almost always slower. For instance, wireless and DSL can be extremely slow, and streaming a video on a slow connection can be excruciating.

Cheap internet plans start at up to 6 Mbps (which stands for megabits per second, the way internet speed is measured). Unfortunately, this doesn’t mean that you are always going to get 6 Mbps all the time or even most of the time. The reality is, you’re probably going to average about 3-4 Mbps or worse. If you go with this option, be prepared for grainy video that is constantly buffering.

If you are going to rely on the internet for everything, we recommend that you have at least 25 Mbps Internet service. You’ll get the best quality for video streaming if you have up to 50 Mbps service or more, but 25 is the bare minimum that we recommend. You can probably scrape by with 10-15 Mbps if you have to, but the experience is not going to be fantastic.

As far as your phone service goes, you really need to think about how much you use your land line. If you rarely touch your home phone, it may be time to give it up and save yourself a little money. We know you may be worried about cell towers going down in the middle of a storm, but many of them have been improved and been made storm-resistant in the last 10-15 years. We’ve even heard anecdotal stories about people still having cell phone service while their land line had been knocked out during a storm.

Whatever you choose to do, you should know that you can call 911 from basically any phone, even cell phones that aren’t activated.