I think solar panels are a great way to "invest" in your life. However, they do demand large "standup costs". I've been told that a ROI of these panels is able in 8-10 years (over here, in the Netherlands). But hey, it's also great to provide for your own energy isn't it?
Yup, it's effective, and i just mentioned the well as an example, a bit of a longterm for some, but overall a good deal. You can expand that thought on solar panels also, but that seeks much more of an investment.
There are many smaller things that u can do to try to save up, even sharing you internet connection with neighbours can save you some bucks, and while many will think you loose bandwidth with this, it mostly isnt the case. Im on such shared connection, me and 4 other people use it, we upgraded the package to max that provider could give us and went from solo 5 mbit to shared 25 mbit, but are paying half the price when we split the bill. The only investment there was some networking devices (alfa 2w adapters) so that we can have the needed range. Simple as that. Advice if you do this: make a shared local network folder with movie/series download, that way there is going to be much less outband connection usage - the traffic will be local (wifi)
cheers