It’s cheaper to cool a home than to heat it.
Here’s what I did......
My house if more-or-less square. What that means is for the same amount of living space (~3400 sq ft), my house has less exterior wall than a comparable “golden rectangle” home.
My house also faces to the south—where the highest proportion of windows on an exterior wall is on most homes.
I live in NC and while we don’t have the brutal winters experienced in the northeast, the fact that my home faces south means I can take advantage of the sun while it’s in the southern hemisphere during the winter. During the summer the sun simply beats down on an asphalt shingle roof. The thicker insulation in the attic means my house keeps that warmth out of the living space. (as with most others)
During the winter the southern sun (when it’s out) means my heat rarely runs during the day.
We have brutal Northeast winters, but with passive solar they did not seem brutal. On sunny days we would let the house heat up to whatever our toleration level was(usually about 90 degrees) then open some windows. We could have designed it to not heat so much or use curtains more but we liked the sunshine. When you are toasty warm and go outside and it is 15 degrees, the cold does not seem anywhere near as bad as when you are in a fossil fuel heated home trying to save money with the temperature at 68-70.