I keep the bedroom at about 70'f, but the rest of the house gets 80'F to 90'F or hotter.

Cooling the entire house (3br ranch) with a 8000btu GE (10.8 EER) window AC that I fit in a picture window in the living room. I set it at about 70F and it runs non stop in this heat (90F/very humid)... It stays anywhere from 71F-75F in the hallway, a little warmer in the bedrooms (use a fan to move the air around)...not the best setup but works very well and keeps it dry in here and very cheap (vs central AC). I think its drawing about 700 to 800watts ...i usually can shut it down in the morning for a few hours and tomorrow I should be able to turn it off for a few days (cold front)... If I had Central AC i would probably set it about 74F or so...

AC has maybe run 5 hours total in the last 10 years.
House under big fir trees, open doors/window in AM for an hour, never gets above 78 or so (except those 5 hours when it got to 100F a few years ago here)

I have a Nest. It is generally programmed for 79 while I'm here, 81 at night, 83 in the day while I'm gone, but of course auto away bumps it up to 86 when I'm out of the house or not moving around.

It's been in the 100s this week. While we had a bit of a mild July here in Dallas this year, my electric bill was only $72. :)

When we moved into this house we kept it about 80-82 but as we have replaced all the windows and all but one of the doors we are now able to keep it at a more comfortable 76 and the KWH usage is the same or sometimes less than it was with the old windows.
When it cools off I'll be adding more insulation in the attic and that will help I also plan to put in a new AC in the spring next year as well which will enable us to keep the house a a more comfortable 74 or so.

With our 100*+ every day and the lows at night that barely hit 80 and only sub 85 for about 2 hours a night it's a constant battle trying to keep cool. Not to mention the dew point is always above 70* except one day early this summer it was a cool 95* and 20% humidity. I thought it was 85*. I had forgotten what dry air was...

With a proper sized system you set the temp and forget it. Letting the temp warm up during the day while you are away does nothing but make for an uncomfortable house when you get home because the system isn't capable of removing all that heat, it's designed to maintain temp which requires smaller equipment. You also end up increasing the humidity in the house which the AC also has to pull out before any real cooling can be done. Not good for the house or furniture. Your AC is the little engine that could not a dragster. Always maintain steady states with no drastic changes.
Even many of the govt studies have finally shown there is little to no savings from setback thermostats.

If your home is suitable for mini-split systems, you might want to look into
replacing your old system with an inverter type mini-split.

They have a variable output, and use very low power at low output levels.
I was just running my Den Sanyo 24,000 BTU system to cool down the Den only.
It wasn't real hot here, so it was only using 360 to 460 watts, when it wasn't in idle mode.
Total usage after a couple of hours was 0.5 kWh.. :D

We do not have AC or a swamp cooler.

Cooling is by night ventilation that is sometimes aided by a fan, and daytime shading. The large southern facing windows have external shades, while the east and western windows are internally shaded. Roof is gravel on polyurethane.

All in all I'll say that the approach for our comfort level in our climate is less than ideal but acceptable. There are probably 15 - 30 days a summer that I find our bedroom too hot to sleep in until about midnight. For me that means over 82F in 40 - 60% humidity.

If we aren't on vacation {a few days every couple of years}, we set the thermostat at 75 in the summer, and 71 or 72 in the winter. We recently had a high efficiency HVAC installed and it came with a programmable thermostat. The 30 seconds of instructions my wife got from the installer were as worthless as the couple of page programming manual that came with it. You don't really need too much though, if you just set it at one temperature 24/7. :o

We did downsize from a 3 ton to a 2 ton unit after an energy audit confirmed we were efficient enough to do it. The auditor recommended an additional 5" of insulation if we planned to go that route, so I had 10" blown in. After all, if 5" is good, 10" must be better.

Haven't had it long enough to compare our consumption to our old 12 SEER. Our regular usage last month came to 623 kWh so, we'll see in about 3 more weeks.

Energy.Gov says some interesting things here:
Thermostats | Department of Energy

623 kWh sounds pretty modest for Alabama in the summer. I don't know how you do it, but my hat is off to you.