Advice/thoughts on attic insulation quote?

It’s not the most glamorous job but I just helped a family member shoot over 40 bags of insulation into their attic. Some spaces had zero insulation to begin with, other areas had some but we easily added 6-8 inches. He got all the insulation from Lowe’s and it came with a free rental of the machine for 24 hours.

I think he spent less than $1000 to get it all done. And it took us about 4 hours to knock it all out.

The rest of the stuff might be necessary to hire someone if you can’t do it yourself.

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$4000 to remove old insulation, home air sealing, attic entrance hatch, and r30 blown in fiberglass insulation

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I'd probably be OK with this. You'll see the most benefit from these items.

You can get an insulation blanket to cover the attic fan location and they work well.

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$1700 for a hybrid attic fan (solar and power motored)

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Never rely on a powered device for attic ventilation. You need some type of vent along the roof ridge and intake vents down lower. Whether that is gable vents or a combination of gable and soffit vents, you need to figure that out. Whirlybirds are best if you have nothing at the roof ridge level.

Personally, I'd go in this order:

1) Fix attic ventilation. You dont want to add insulation until you have gable vents, soffit vents and ridge venting ironed out. It will be a lot harder to do work up there with a bunch of insulation especially if you end up adding soffit venting. You'll want an almost empty attic if you add soffit venting and baffles. The baffles need to be installed before you blow in attic insulation.
2) Get the insulation blanket for the old attic fan location
3) Pay the $4k for those services

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This is way over priced.

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It is probably a bit high but IMO the value added is the infiltration sealing in the ceiling and adding the attic entrance hatch. Both those jobs suck but add a lot. Combine that with removing old and possibly moldy insulation and adding R30 and not having to do anything yourself is close to worth it if it were me. I'd still shop for a better price but this doesn't seem outlandish.

My son recently helped my husband .. got the machine from Lowe’s and idk how many bags. I’m not sure it’s helping our usage but our home is more comfortable.

Spent less than $1000.

If they really do air sealing, not just pay lip service to it, it is likely more effective than the insulation in a cooling dominated climate.

Infiltration air from leaks from the attic to living space are both hot and humid. Insulation alone doesn't stop leaks, it really only stops heat transfer through conduction, and in case you have ever noticed, air filters are made of fiberglass because the air travels right through them. Some people call fiberglass insulation filter glass, in an old house you can see where the major air leaks are by how dirty the fiberglass insulation is.

My older brother, who, incidentally, knows everything, sprayed R30 fiberglass in my mothers 1964 house that had very little insulation originally and it made no discernible difference in either comfort or the electric bills, but now it's a freaking mess to have to do anything in the attic, and every time the AC guy does the Summer tune up he finds fiberglass on the cooling coils, plus the fiberglass stops up the condensate line. I suspect fiberglass and cellulose are equally bad about this.

My house is sprayfoamed. It is twice the size of my mother's, and my power bills are less than hers. Sprayfoam is better, but in some areas you can't get a termite bond on it and roofing companies don't like to warrant their products on sprayfoamed houses, but it is definitely cooler and quieter and uses less electricity to stay that way, but it is also usually at least twice as much money as the fluffy stuff.

However, so was my built in 72" x 36" refrigerator, and after ten years I can assure you there has never been a time when I walked by it and thought "Gosh, I sure wish I'd bought that cheaper refrigerator."

I wouldn't remove any insulation UNLESS I was going from fiberglass/cellulose to foam. Focus on your goal here-not just on price. I personally would go from fiberglass to spray foam. I would have the attic floor done in foam and not the ceiling. Check this out: insulation. He's very good and a straight shooter.