My thermostat has a calibration feature and I offset it by 1.5 degrees because it is located in a warmer location. When it reads 70F it is actually 71.5F at the thermostat but it is 70F in most of the house.
It also has smart recovery which means it learns the house heating patern and comes on early enough to be AT temperature for the time I programmed.
I just intstalled a new furnace last winter and resized and replaced all of the ductwork with insulated flex duct. I recently upgraded my thermostat to an Ecobee wifi enabled model with Internet control with weather forecasting.
This allows me to set it back remotely if I forget to when I go somewhere on the weekends. Also to turn it up if I go home early from work.

I had a Home Depot floor person try to tell me that you don’t save any money by turning your temperature down. I asked him a simple question and he agreed that it does save money by thinking about the answer.
If the outside temperature is 50F and my house is 50F, how much heat am I losing? He said “none”. I then asked him the outside temperature was 50F and his house was 70F, how much heat was he losing? He agreed he would be losing heat. The point is that the greater the difference between temperatures, the faster the heat loss. Bringing my house back to temperature uses less than maintaining temperature because of this.

Check out the Ecobee, no I don’t work for them.
http://www.ecobee.com