My motivation in all of this, I'm sorry to say, is personal and selfish. While I am an old hippie with sympathies that lean toward conservation and environmentalism, I never acted toward maximizing the efficiency of my home until the reality of retirement was impossible to ignore.
I'm about to turn 68 and my wife, who is still working, will be 61 later this year. I read somewhere that you can have a greater influence on your security in retirement by reducing the amount of money you need than by amassing great sums. Since I have no prospect of amassing anything on the positive side, I saw a lot of sense in reducing the need side of the equation. My own belief is that the major problems we will confront in terms of monthly bills moving forward will be energy and food. This assumes that Social Security and Medicare remain in place.
Food is not the topic of this thread but would probably be a valuable discussion for another thread.
We buy gas and electric from the same major corporation. Natural gas, for now, is very cheap and efficient. Because of my panels, electricity cost is zero. Most other steps we've taken center on reducing heating and cooling expense by increasing insulation and the integrity of our envelope.
Because of my age and Colorado policy, my property tax is a whopping $453.00 for this year. The city I live in provides sewer service and trash and recycling pickup at a senior rate of $27.40/mo. Domestic water is inexpensive. The bill ranges from $22 to $27 per month. As a result, we expect to pay about $80/month for gas, electric, water, sewer, trash and recycling combined. All of that for 60% of our cell phone bill. We dumped cable, leaving us with $80/mo. for broadband and our landline phone. These last items offer more room for paring going forward.
We are doing good things if not for the most noble of reasons. We are doing them nonetheless. If, like me, you need selfish motives to energize these kind of changes, so be it. Fact is, you will feel better because you are reducing your personal overhead and you might even take some delight in the fact that you are becoming part of the solution. Please consider it.