As a person who lives off grid completely, and loves generating power for 'free', I would have to agree with several other posters here in saying that there is no such thing as a free lunch. One of the commentators here already laid out the pricing much better than what I could, however I would like to add my 2 cents.
Like at least one person said already, the power company can supply you with power much cheaper than you think you can supply it to yourself. So viewing things from a short term perspective, you would actually be losing money. Long term, you end up paying your electricity bill in advance. PV panels can last a very long time, and baring inverter/controller failure over time, you still have to buy new batteries every 5 years or less. OR learn how to rejuvenate batteries on your own, which still costs money. Anyhow, very long term you may come out ahead, but it would not be likely.
Our battery bank right now consists of 9 12v marine deep cycle batteries. ~1200 ah(amp hours), lets us(two people) run two laptops, and several lights during the day, and through the night. We must have sun from 11am - 3PM for these batteries to charge fully for this cycle to continue. Cost of these batteries was ~$700, and we want/need many, many more. We are also located in E Arizona where the sun shows very good. Still, you can not count on it always being there for you.
Charge controllers 2x Xantrex C60's. ~$150 each. Not much else to really say here, they do a good job.
- x 200W PV panels, currently not hooked up, but cost ~$650 each.
- x 60W PV panels (only 16 currently hooked up) free! Given to us by a radio station where my friend works as an Engineer. The 16 we have hooked up currently give us roughly 40amps while the sun is shinning, and we usually hit full charge around 3PM.
Other necessities are a 30KW generator for pumping water, and to power 220v devices($5000 at a steal), a propane refrigerator for ~$1000 new, a propane hotshot water heater for ~$700, and a pressurization system for the water, so we have running water inside(do not recall the cost off hand).
So, all in all we're talking $9650 to live completely off grid 'reasonably' comfortable, while getting very good deals on the generator, and free panels(over 2KW of panels for free is something that will not happen for most). All that, and we still can not use our main desktop computer systems for more than short periods of time. My pride and joy gaming computer (which is actually very modest compared to many out there) will drain this battery bank in 2-3hours . . .
What I would suggest as a start is that you and your husband find a kill-a-watt P4 power monitoring device(s)(these can be found online for ~$15 each on sale), plug all your electric devices into them, and start making choices on what you can do without. After that look into buying lower powered devices where it makes sense, especially if you use computers a lot.
Also, if you could somehow get a very good deal on a PV array, and isolate some of your most power hungry devices from your grid, running said devices off of batteries. You would save more money this way, than dumping this electricity back into the grid. But again, solar equipment cost can be very. very high . . .