Editor's Pick: Originally Published Monday, Dec. 21

Nicole Lacy, a Chicago resident, simply had enough of her cable company and decided to

take direct action

.

"After years of being frustrated with my cable bills rising and the customer service getting increasingly worse, I cut the cable cord a few weeks ago," Lacy says. "I noticed one day that my AT&T U-Verse bill jumped by almost $20 to $30 monthly, and after I couldn't negotiate a better price, I just asked that it be disconnected."

Lacey decided to purchase the Amazon Fire TV stick, and once she installed it, she was able to purchase Netflix and Sling TV, which provided access to the channels that she really liked. Since then, there's been no looking back. "Cutting the cable for me means having more flexibility over my monthly budget for entertainment," Lacey says. "With the way cable costs are rising, it just became hard to manage financially. Besides, I don't miss paying for a lot of channels that I never watched so why should I pay for something that I never fully take advantage of any way?"

The cable giants could have kept Lacey as a customer, but their business model just wouldn't allow it. "If cable companies could offer customers a way to just pay for the channels they watch without the "bundles", I would still be a cable subscriber," she says.

Judy Williams, a marketing coordinator in Saint Francis, Wis., had a similar cord-cutting experience and isn't looking back.

"We haven't had cable since we married, and I had already cut the cord before that," Williams says. "Initially it was rough and I had something akin to 'withdrawal.' But it's been over four years now and, other than being able to watch local channels received via an antenna, we use Roku and our computers for all our programming."

Williams says cable seems almost antiquated now. "The funniest thing is when we travel and I have access to cable, I feel absolutely overwhelmed by all the choices," she explains. "I get stressed out and wind up either turning the TV off or watching programming on my computer. How weird is that?"

If you're mulling over what Lacey and Williams have already done, you're not alone. According to PayWizard, a subscriber management provider for paid TV companies, 67% of consumers are expected to use paid Internet TV services like Netflix and Hulu over the holidays, with 25% of U.S. consumers planning on signing in to Netflix alone. Additionally, 36% of U.S. consumers already have an Internet TV subscription and 15% of U.S. consumers regularly use streaming devices - twice the number of consumers in the U.K. and Germany.

If you're willing to cut that cable connection, make sure you have a game plan first.

For starters, ask yourself what you'll be missing by going without cable. "Are you willing to do without local TV content where you might regularly get updates about local news, sports and weather?" asks Mark Vena, vice president of EchoStar, which houses Internet TV provider Slingbox. "Very few of the popular OTT -- over the top -- services like Netflix offer genuine live content."

Also, is everyone in your house on board? "If there are multiple people in your home who want to watch television content at the same time, that's a problem," Vena adds. "Several of the most popular Internet television services have significant restrictions where only a finite number of users can log on at the same time to consume content."

To really be sure, start chronicling your viewing activity, and see if cutting the cable cord won't really change your viewing habits while offering the benefit of a much lower price. "I recommend that people keep a journal of what they watch for about a week," advises Jim Wang, founder of WalletHack.com, a personal finance site. "It really opens your eyes as to how little you probably watch TV."

"We all think that cutting the cord is some massive cut when in reality we only watch a couple shows," he adds. "A journal can really dispel that idea."

Maybe that's the ticket to a cable-free life. Frustrated consumers like Lacey have already embraced it. Are you next?