As streaming options flood the market, consumers weigh mounting costs after cord cutting

BALTIMORE -- To cut the cord or not to cut the cord?

With more streaming options available now than ever before, that's the question on the minds of millions of Americans. We spoke with an finance expert for some helpful tips about how to navigate the many streaming apps to watch your favorite shows - without breaking the bank.

Cutting the cable cord and going all in on streaming apps used to be seen as innovative and new.

But with so many of our favorite shows spread across many platforms on demand, the perks of saving money go out the window, and the cost to binge can get pricey.

You have to go way back to 2006 and 2007 - that's when a new innovative idea to stream your favorite movies and shows was born. Netflix getting its start, along with Amazon Prime.

"Amazon prime is a perfect example, it was a throw-in with a service you already had with Amazon, well over time what has happened is that these companies have grown and the number of them and they are really investing in content and so there's some really good programming out there," said Karyl Leggio, a finance professor at Loyola University in Maryland. 

Programming that includes some of your favorite shows that have all of us talking at work and with friends. But the big perk is watching whatever, whenever we want.

"So if you want to watch Only Murders in the Building, and Poker Face and Ted Lasso, you have to get three different services, and if your child wants to watch Encanto that's a fourth, so it became more and more expensive through time," Leggio said. 

And with time, we've all taken on the costs as quality content becomes more widely available.

Netflix, being among the first streaming services, has gone from a subscription under 10 bucks to now nearly 20.

And while so many other platforms can cost you as little as $5 or $6 a month, that amount still shakes out to what you might have paid if you just kept your traditional cable.

So how do we become more cost-efficient in streaming?

"So binging makes good sense, binge on one network, turn it off then binge on another one and it works," Leggio suggests. "You have to just be diligent and there are some apps now that allow you to track what subscriptions you have and remind you to turn something off."

Experts say this is the best way to go as streaming platforms engage in a price war - the expectation is that the costs will hit a ceiling - but until then, exercise caution and take advantage of pausing those subscriptions - whenever you want.