Where should I set my thermostat?

 Usually when the repair or service visit is just about complete, during the final testing of the system from the thermostat the home owner asks what the "right setting" for their thermostat is? The most usual answer is "wherever you are comfortable." or "Well, I set my thermostat at about...". and it seems to keep the house comfortable.

 There is a lot of truth in the first answer, and the second is very dependent on who is giving the advice. The better question is What thermostat setting will keep me most comfortable?. 
Let's look at this question with the idea that comfort is the goal here, not just some number that magically is right for every home and homeowner.

 When I first started learning air conditioning and heating repair in 1976 my understanding of comfort was limited to temperature on the thermostat dial. I wondered why it needed a different setting in winter (higher) than in summer (lower) and even seemed to vary from home to home. My thought was that if all the windows were painted black and no one knew what the weather was like outside, then one temperature would do for both summer and winter. Of course I was wrong, but just learning.

 Then came humidity. You've heard "It's not the heat it's the humidity", turns out that's where most of the heat really lives.  Air, just plain dry air cannot hold very much heat. The thermal coefficient of air (ability to hold heat) is quite low without adding moisture to it. Relative humidity is the amount of moisture actually in air as compared to the amount it could hold at any given temperature. So, "here's what happened" I love Monk. 

  In the winter the air get's thirsty and would like to be full of moisture which it will get from anywhere it can.
 It was okay outside at about 70% relative humidity, then it came to visit your home and be warmed. 
 When your furnace or heat pump raises the temperature of outside air from (since we're in NC) say 25 deg F. to an inside temperature of 72 deg. F., the relative humidity drops down to about 15% (roughly I'm reading the scale on my analog psychrometer), and the air is looking for moisture. One of the first places air looks is the surface of your skin.
The moisture evaporates off of your skin and takes the  heat with it. You go looking for a sweater after you check the thermometer. It says you should be comfortable, there must be something wrong with it.

 The reverse happens in summer. When your air conditioning kicks on and drops the temperature the outdoor relative humidity was quite high, and about 30% of the work done by a properly sized air conditioner is towards removing humidity from the air so your body can cool itself by the same process of evaporative cooling that was such a bother last winter. If you set the thermostat to 72 deg. F it would be quite chilly, and expensive too. The relative humidity is a major influence in your comfort level.
  So, what is the right temperature? On a psychrometric chart it exists as a parallelogram and we need to stay inside the box to be in a range of what most folks would call comfortable. In a home that is not designed to control humidity the setting can be upwards of 75 degrees, maybe more. Don't think "it's just me", it's just very dry air.

Find yourself on the chart below. Courtesy of Lennox Corp.