A MILLENNIAL'S GUIDE TO CORD-CUTTING: How to ditch your $100 monthly cable bill forever and still watch everything you want

OK, so you don't *need* a television set if you're cutting the cord — you can stream on your tablet or your computer or even your phone. But you can use a TV set to watch network TV, which is different from cable. (A lot of my friends didn't know the difference between the two). All you have to buy is a digital antenna to access Fox, CBS, NBC, and ABC.

Cost: Digital antennas cost between $20 and $50, usually. Using them is a bit trial-and-error, so we can't promise a perfect connection. But if you want network channels, it might be a good investment.

Netflix is perhaps the most ubiquitous subscription streaming service. It lets you stream a ton of movies and TV series — both Netflix originals like "Orange is the New Black" and "Master of None" as well as shows you probably watched on cable, like "It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia." Mostly though, people go to Netflix for the movies. There's nothing livestreaming on Netflix, so you'll miss same-day or next-day streams of shows you like, but if you don't care about immediacy, Netflix is your friend.

Cost: $8.99/month for streaming on one device. (I joined Netflix before May 2014, when the service increased its prices, so I was grandfathered into a $7.99/month plan). If you want to pay $4 more per month, you can share Netflix's streaming plan on four devices at the same time. This is good for families, or if you have a bunch of roommates.

Without paying for Hulu Plus, you can access a few full episodes of TV shows, but if you're willing to shell out $7.99 a month, you can access Hulu Plus' network of channels, including ABC, Bravo, Lifetime, Nickelodeon, FX, Comedy Central, Discovery, MTV, and more. It's a good investment if you want to stream next-day episodes, which you can't do on Netflix. Personally, I don't pay for Hulu Plus, but if there's something I'm dying to watch, I'll ask to use a friend's account.

Cost: $7.99/month

Amazon is catching up to Netflix in terms of original content. "Transparent" and "The Man in the High Castle" are both great series. A lot of Amazon Prime's movies are also available on Netflix, so in that regard it's not much different.

Cost: $99 a year for Amazon Prime, or $8.25/month. But you're getting a lot more than just streaming if you have Prime — you get free two-day shipping on all Amazon orders, for example. I was an Amazon Prime subscriber before I realized its streaming potential, so I don't consider my annual Prime membership a streaming service — that's just a perk for when I want to watch one of Amazon's series.

So ask if you can use it. HBO Go lets you and two other people share one account with no fee penalty, unlike Netflix. If you insist on having your own standalone HBO account, you can sign up for HBO Now to get your fix for shows like "Girls" or "Game of Thrones." You can stream these live, so if you're watching on your TV, it's no different from watching HBO as part of a cable bundle.

Cost: Free, if you can hop on your parents' HBO account. HBO Now costs $14.99/month.

Sling TV is a service that lets you stream live TV over the internet. You get the Travel Channel, TNT, IFC, the Food Network, HGTV, CNN, ESPN, AMC, Disney, and more. You can also add HBO, but it'll cost extra. I can see why Sling TV would be attractive, but I don't use it. Business Insider editor Jay Yarow wrote about his experience cutting down his cable bill with help from Sling TV earlier this year.

Cost: $20/month, without HBO.

TV networks know people are cord-cutting and moving online, so in return, they've started to give users more access to on-demand video online. If your parents are like mine, they probably have a cable subscription. Be a good daughter or son and help them sign up for an account on their cable provider's website, if they don't have one already. Voila — now you can use that account to log in and watch live content. If you're paying for a channel in a cable TV package, you can watch it online too.

Cost: Free, if you can make it work.

We don't advise it, but there are ways to download movies and episodes of TV shows for free using torrenting and wonky, questionably legal streaming websites, often hosted in other countries.

Cost: Free, but you could inadvertently install malware on your computer and/or face legal consequences.

All told, I spend about $17 on streaming services that meet my needs, plus the cost of internet.

I can watch pretty much anything I want, whenever I want it by using a combination of Netflix, the occasional Hulu Plus, Amazon Prime, TV Everywhere-esque cable services, and my generous friends' HBO Go accounts.

Netflix ($7.99) + Amazon Prime ($8.25) + The login to my parent's cable when I need it ($0) + A friend's HBO Go account ($0, but otherwise $14.99 per month) = $16.24 per month.

That doesn't even take into account splitting the already-small fee with roommates.

Cord-cutting may not be for everyone, but I'm far from being the only millennial who would rather cobble together streaming services to watch TV.