I'm re-posting my experimentally-derived findings here. You never mentioned your heating system type. I'll also mention that I had to strain to find even 5 kWh per month coming from phantom loads. I think that's something that's overblown (like trying to get better gas mileage by removing the windshield wipers and glovebox from your car). Yes, you can do it, but it will be a waste of time for the relative savings versus the convenience. Just accept that as a frugal person, you use so little electricity versus the normal American energy hog, so you're allowed to keep electronics plugged in. If you're worried about digital displays - don't. These are LED displays and use almost no electricity.
You mentioned the Nest, but I can give you some horror stories on these, as in failing to work for no apparent reason (I've seen two of these do this, both in the dead of winter) - my advice if you live in a place that is freeze-prone during your absence, any thermostat with a battery is a liability. As someone who has fixed many a frozen pipe (shit happens when it's -20F out..) I'd say don't do anything to add to the probability of this occurrence. I've also seen people actually increase their energy use with these combined with modern heating systems. For example, condensing gas boilers, which modulate gas flow (and thus hot water temperature), can be set to operate on a heating curve that slowly brings your home up to the appropriate temperature. These heating units are not meant to be cycled. Any thermostat that promises you heating savings does it exactly that way - the only way it can, by cycling heat on and off. All a thermostat consists of is a fancy switch to connect a low voltage signal to your heating system on and off. Newer boilers are designed to heat your home to the temperature it needs to be, slowly and constantly operating to increase temperature when needed (so cycling breaks the boilers intended operating design and sets it back several minutes when it has to make up for the energy loss of the last cycle off period) There's debate among heating professionals and engineers if it's beneficial to lower your home temperature while you are gone and then bring it back up to temp while you are home. It made sense to do this with say, a low-efficiency oil-based hot-air furnace that could ramp up temperature quickly, but I think the argument has been settled with the newer modulating boilers that take hours to get the house to temp after you drop it down significantly (as in the energy used by having the boiler have to work at a scaled peak efficiency for so long negates the energy savings of dropping the temp down). While you could just set (or override) the boiler controls to work on a different heating curve, this dramatically reduces the efficiency of a gas boiler. Anyway, I've found that the best thermostats are still coil resistance based (they're rarer, but still can be found) or at least do not have batteries.
But I digress. Here's my input on electricity usage:
Not sure what you people are doing. We run 130-160 kWH per month, generally no more than 5kWh per day. We have electric appliances (heat & hot water are not electric driven) and use the stove regularly. We also have heating pads for our dogs that run constantly.
If you want to save money on electricity the formula is pretty simple.
1. Don't use your electric dryer. These can run 2-3kWH per load. We use ours maximum 1x to 2x per week. Dry your clothes inside if necessary - we do it year round, so there's no excuse for being lazy on this. Find a place and do it. Heating elements are ridiculously inefficient and waste a ton of electricity versus their benefit. This is your biggest source of potential savings. Do you know why you can't find an energy efficient dryer? Because they don't exist - they're all horribly inefficient. So are hair dryers, so keep those to short bursts.
2. Don't use your dishwasher. Some are energy efficient but still don't do a good job as just washing by hand. If you have to use it, never use any drying functions.
3. CFLs and LEDS. Self explanatory. Turn them off when you don't need them. Put some nice LEDs in for the lights you use most.
4. Research appliances. Want a fridge with an ice-maker? Stay away from through-the-door models. The most efficient ice makers are located in the freezer. Stick with a basic freezer-on-the-top model. Ours is 14 years old and we know it pulls 40kWh per month and we do use the ice maker.
5. Unplugging electronics to save from phantom loads is a waste of time. I tested various chargers and items (like the TV) that were on standby and the kwH savings were negligible versus unplugging them. Unless you're in an off-the-grid solar-array battery-bank house, saving this 1-5 kwH per month isn't worth the aggravation.
6. Don't worry about motorized appliances, electric stoves or microwaves, or any other electric kitchen appliances. Motorized appliances (blenders, exhaust fans, washing machines) use very little electricity for the functions they perform. The electric motor is an engineering marvel - perhaps the most important invention of the past 200 years. They're able to convert very small amounts of electricity into amazing amounts of mechanical energy. So use these as needed. Also, electric stoves and microwaves are so infrequently used (very few actual minutes of use per day) that even though they may use a relatively high rate of electricity, the total effect is small.
7. Put a switch timer or photo-sensor on anything that needs to be turned off but you may forget. We dry laundry in a bathroom and like to run the vent for an hour to suck moisture out of the air. Click, one hour, no need to remember to shut it off. Taking a shower and a shit? 15, 20 minutes and you're good. Added benefit on dumps is that the air still gets cleaned and the wife is happier when she uses the bathroom after you. You'll never be conflicted between shutting the vent off as you leave the room for energy savings versus letting it run indefinitely to spare the loved ones again.
8. If you have well water, get an oversized pressure tank. Your well pump will run much less frequently and won't have to kick on to give you enough pressure to take the long shower you want.
9. Shut down/sleep electronics. If you're not using it right now, it should be off or standing by. Laptops use far less electricity than desktops.
10. If your electric company has smart meters, sign up for monitoring. Want to know how much an appliance uses? Shut everything down in the house (cut the breakers if need be) except the one appliance you are testing (start with the fridge since you don't want to shut that off). This works good on vacations. If you're away for 7 days and the only outlet and thing in the house running was the fridge then you know all of the kWh for that period went there. Use the fridge as a baseline and then do the same leaving just the fridge and another appliance on, etc.
Hope this helps.