Household Energy Consumption and Successful Energy EducationBehavior ChoicesTwo homes constructed the same year, sitting on the same city block, with similar households, can have vastly different energy costs. The furnace can be the same and the water heaters carbon copies, but one household can effectively control their homes energy costs and the other household produces an energy bill, shamefully, out of control.This is about insulation levels and how well the ducts are sealed, but it is even more about household behavior, energy education, and putting your best, energy-saving, foot forward. This is about parents passing down environmental concerns and expectations to their children and then to grandchildren. It’s about people that lived through the great depression and know the benefit of reducing waste and living with less because that was the only choice.One thing I’ve wondered, is it easier for a rural farmer, who picks tomatoes and corn out of his own garden, to be energy wise and interested in controlling energy consumption, or is it easier for the Central Park native that buys food from an asphalt fruit stand to understand the importance of conservation? Do you need to know how many tits a cow has before you can be frugal with a gallon of milk?Which household is more apt to have had the benefit of ongoing parental household energy education? Is it the farmer, as a result of being close to nature and the environment, likely to be the energy saver and need less energy education? On the other hand, perhaps the person that lives in the high rise is more aware of energy consumption and the amount of power it takes to keep a big city running.Energy educators and power companies have a big job as they work to provide energy education to all kinds of households. Since every household has the potential for both saving energy and reducing energy waste, the energy education challenge is to design a program that can be successful for all households. The gentleman farmer that lives by the creek in the green valley can benefit from energy education and the bank teller in the duplex by central park can also.If people are aware of energy-saving tools and behaviors, they can, within limits, control their energy consumption and curb energy waste. Consumer education then becomes one of the most cost-effective conservation measures available. Educators work to bring consumer education to the people in four essential areas. The subjects remain pretty much the same, but the approach may vary according to house location, income status, and resident expectations.energy EducationEnergy ED and Behavioral Decisions:Behavioral decisions is the Energy Educators biggest challenge when providing household energy education. It is the biggest challenge – yet the area with the most potential. People are simply set-in-their-ways and making behavioral changes is a slow and difficult task. How do you get a person to take a shorter shower with a low-flow shower head when they are accustom to relaxing for hours under the hot flow of water with enough water pressure to make a noticeable divot in the skin? The person feels slighted and abused. After all, just how much energy does it take to run a darn shower for an extra twenty minutes anyway?To change energy wasting behavior, educators try to make a direct connection between the shower they love and the power bill they hate. People learn from their own experiences and their own power bill. Ideal learning opportunities occur when residents make a decision, perform a task or behavior, and do it with their wallet in one hand and their power bill in the other. The educator is often more successful at getting the behavior changed if it is connected directly to the power bill.Therefore, to change energy behavior, the household needs to have power bill education and a complete understanding of the information that is available on almost all monthly statements. To connect real dollars and cents to behavior is the best way to change wasteful behavior.Energy ED and Comfort Perceptions:Basic ComfortsWhenever my daughter complains about a simple hardship, like having to walk home from school in 50 degree weather, I mention her ancestors and the Oregon Trail. If walking home in mild weather was a true hardship, we would still be living in Europe somewhere with everybody else.A lot of people would like to throw the energy educator out the door the minute they mention 68 degrees and thermostat in the same sentence. Are we all getting ridiculously soft or are the comfort levels we have come to expect simply a dividend of having someone else live in a covered wagon for 4 months.The energy educator needs to take a two fold approach here. One is to re-train the household into realizing that some comfort expectations are not really needed comforts and the second is to point out that the lack of comfort can have more to do with the lack of air sealing then the setting on the thermostat.Once the household blames comfort problems on the lack of insulation and the holes in the heating ducts instead of the size of the furnace and the out-of-adjustment thermostat, the household can get back to saving energy in comfort.Energy ED and Household Operation:Chances are if you don’t know what the brake pedal does and where it is located, you shouldn’t be trying to drive the car. You can get in the car, stick your elbow out the window, start the car rolling down the road, but it’s all going to be wasted when you can’t get the car stopped. Remember, car insurance covers dents and missing bumpers, but home insurance doesn’t cover energy waste.Energy education needs to provide training on where your homes brakes are located and how to use them. Only with an understanding of basic home energy systems, can the household use those systems in a more energy efficient manner.The challenge of the energy educator is to provide the household with a basic understanding of how their homes energy systems work and how they work with each other. With the broad differences in homes spanning more than a hundred years, this is no easy task for the educator.The educator is like the child with a huge, connect-the-dots puzzle in front of them. The educator completes the challenge by connecting all the energy system dots in a home until they make a complete picture that is understood by the household.MaintenanceEnergy ED and System Maintenance:Now that the Energy Educator has provided information on the energy systems and how they work together, he or she needs to provide training on the benefit of maintaining those systems. A car that can get 50 miles per gallon will not be able to realize that great fuel mileage if the tires are flat.With the coming cold weather, the Jones’s decided it was time to finally have insulation installed under the floor. Their feet have been cold long enough and warming their feet was contributing to huge increases in their power bill. Insulation was installed under the floor, but the foundation vents were not repaired which allowed critters to enjoy the newly insulated underfloor as well. As the critters rearranged the insulation, placing a lot of it in the dirt, most of the benefit of installing insulation was lost by not properly maintaining both the insulation and the vents.One of the most important maintenance items is the heat pump. Households get lulled into a sense of having great energy efficiency once they have the benefit of a heat pump. The energy educators job is to provide information on the importance of having a Heating Contractor service the heat pump system once a year to get the most energy efficiency from the heat pump every year. Once you get a Prius, don’t maintain it it like a John Deere and drive it like a Mustang.Not an easy job this thing called energy educator. The homes are all different and the household behaviors range from Covered Wagon to Queen Elizabeth. Energy Education remains the most cost effective measure available to both households and power providers for saving energy and increasing energy efficiency. How we live in our homes and how we react to our desired comfort level has a lot to do with the size of our power bill.So, how much does it cost to stand in a hot shower for an extra twenty minutes? Well, that depends. Fresh water from the hillside spring and a solar water heater, stand there until the clouds come over or the sun sets. But if your taking a shower in the drought region of Texas, pumping the water through a filter and then twenty miles uphill to a forty story high rise, don’t take a shower at all, stick to a sponge bath.

When confronted with an urgent expense, regular loans often do not fully address the issue. A regular loan involves exchange of large amounts, which makes credit checks pertinent. Such credit checks will be time consuming, thus increasing the time within which loan proceeds will become available for use. Instant loans solve the problem. Without the need for credit check, an instant loan advances cash within 24 hours or even less.Therefore, instant loans in the UK are the best option when it comes to paying urgent expenses. It would be interesting to note why loan providers agree to advance instant loans immediately without credit check. Instant loans in the UK are of smaller amounts. Generally, these loans are secured against the next month’s paycheque. Interestingly, the term of repayment of instant loans also spans to a month. The term can be even lesser, sometimes a few days. Consequently, the chances of loan provider losing the money advanced through instant loan are lesser. The loan provider will simply present the post-dated cheque (offered by the borrower) and recover the loan.This explains the reason behind the dauntless approach of loan providers. The benefit extends to the borrowers too. While a bad credit borrower would have faced difficulties in qualifying for regular loans; in case of instant loans UK, he is considered at par with the good credit borrower. The terms on which instant loan is transferred to the bad credit borrower is more or less similar.Instant loans are referred to as payday loans too. Since cash is advanced under the loan, it is also known as cash advance loan. Generally, loan provider will require borrower to fax certain documents in order to approve the loan. When the faxing requirement is done away with then the instant car loan is also known as no fax payday loans.However, there are a certain prerequisites, which loan providers will insist on fulfilling. First, borrower must be employed and be over 18 years of age. It is the paycheque of borrower, which is the principal guarantee in instant loans. Second, borrowers must have a checking account. Instant loan proceeds will be deposited directly into the checking account. Moreover, loan provider can recover the loan amount from this checking account. Third, borrowers must receive their salary or remuneration through a direct debit in bank account. Finally, borrower must possess a chequebook. Loan providers adhere to differing policies by which they will allow non-fulfillment of the prerequisites.As mentioned earlier, the amount advanced under instant loans in the UK is smaller. The amount ranges from £80 to £500 over a term of 14-18 days. When the term of repayment is fixed at 12 months, then borrowers are able to secure as much as £5000. People generally go for instant loans when they are over with their salary or remuneration and need funds to pay smaller routine expenses. The idea is to bridge the gap in resources until the next paycheque accrues.If you are excited at the freedom from dependence on the limited salary that instant loans propose to offer, then the interest rates will come as a damper. The rate of interest or APR charged on instant loans is expensive. All short-term loans are costly, and instant loans are no exception. This will somewhat desist borrowers from using instant loans continually.Instant loan providers in the UK are not regularized under the rules of FSA as mortgage lenders. Therefore, they will set fees on their own. The fees may be as high as £10 to £40 on a loan of £100. Borrowers must try to avoid loan sharks and hard moneylenders, who have a reputation of charging outrageously on instant loans. The option of instant loans must be kept in store until the emergencies. Before such emergencies arise, using instant loans would be more of an unwarranted expenditure, which could have been easily avoided.

my personal payday loan story that can help youthe term payday loan starts with the letter “p” which is the same letter that starts off the words pain, penalty, poor and poverty. Both the internet and the physical world are full of places where you can get a loan with bad credit, no credit check, and no employment verification but what these modern day loan sharks don’t tell you is that their interest rates are so high that one day you may end up with the payday loan mafia coming after you!Sure, these loans look very attractive to those in financial need that are unable to get a loan by conventional means but when the facts are presented what you have to pay back just isn’t worth it. This fictional character that we all refer to as “guido” which is the person that comes to break your arms and legs when you don’t pay a loan shark back is in existence in a different way when it comes to payday loans. Instead of your arms and legs the payday loan guido comes after your heart, soul and peace of mind.Payday loan places make their offerings look so attractive but it is all an illusion because who can really see when they are desperate? What you don’t want to happen is for what appears to be a temporary solution to become a long term problem and many times that is exactly what happens.I’ve been caught in the payday loan otherwise known as payday advance web many times. Sometimes life’s circumstances leave us very few choices and we decide to do what we feel like we have to do to buy gas and put food on the table. Like I said, i’ve been there before and as a survivor of payday loan debt I have knowledge that can help you.I want you to ask yourself a question which is, “if you don’t have enough money to get by what makes you think you can payoff a loan with 300%- 700% interest?” You might as well sell your first born child. Payday loans may seem good in the short run and you may get instant gratification and even a rush when you hold that cash in your hands or see it in your bank account but in the long run it is a race that many can’t win.My story, like many, was that I obtained payday loans to cover immediate expenses I needed cash for but didn’t have money to pay the loans back so I got extension after extension paying out ungodly amounts of money. Before long I was getting new payday loans just to pay the other payday loans I had received. I was trapped in a vicious cycle with no way out and a ton of stress upon me. I became a needy fly caught in the payday loan web, especially since most of my loans were online loans; I was literally in a virtual web. The payday loan spider sucked the life blood out of my bank accounts and I didn’t know what to do.Please understand that you can’t solve a problem with a problem and you can’t come out debt by creating more debt. The solution to your debt starts with gaining additional income sources and paying off existing debt little by little so you can be free. In my own personal payday loan crisis I got up to almost $7, 000 worth of payday loans and when renewal payment time came my entire paycheck was gone. This is a miserable experience that I pray you can avoid. You might already be at this state but even if you are I have some suggestions for you that will offer hope.The first thing you have to do is to make a conscious decision to get out of this situation. Decide to change and become a butterfly rather than a fly caught up in the payday loan web. When a caterpillar is going through the metamorphosis in the cocoon in order to become a butterfly there is a struggle. The struggle is in fact what makes the butterfly great because the struggle to get out of the cocoon transformed actually pushes fluid from the butterfly’s body into its wings so that it can emerge in beautiful flight. This process may be a little painful but it will help you fly and be what you were made to be.One thing that I did was to become an affiliate for payday loan companies so that I could get paid from other people acquiring payday loans. Some people are just going to get them so there is no reason why you shouldn’t get paid from the process that made you pay so much. The second thing I did is what really helped me which was to get a payday loan consolidation company to take on my debt at a reduced amount and pay the payday loans back for me on my behalf. It was one of the best choices I ever made and it was a way out of the payday loan web.You can do a Google search to find companies that will represent you in this way but do your research and make sure that the company you choose is credible. I used pdl assistance, inc. They require an upfront fee to take your case but they will work with you on paying it and it is around $200. Next you set up a plan to pay them a monthly amount on your payday loan debt and they pay your debtors directly. They will give you different term options to pay the debt off and they will deal with the payday loan companies for you. Doing this took a huge weight off of me. I got a 12 month term to repay my payday loan debt at 35% of what I owed the payday loan companies. The $400 a month I was paying on this plan was much better than the $700 plus every two weeks I was paying for all the loans I had.One important thing to know when you start a payday loan consolidation program is that the payday loan companies are going to call you to collect. When they call just give them the information for the company that is representing you and let them know that the debt is going to be repaid to them as part of a loan/debt consolidation program you have initiated. I obtained the fax numbers to my payday loan companies and sent them notification on who to contact regarding the repayment of my loans. If you do this make sure to include your account number and social security number so they can properly locate your account.Some companies will continue to try and collect from you in spite of this so I have another suggestion if this happens. If you get numerous collection calls after you have informed them about your debt consolidation you need to fax and/or send them a cease and desist letter. You can get a template off the internet and submitting this letter will stop the collection calls while your debt consolidation program is in the works.Another tip is to close the bank account you have the loan fees being deducted from if possible. You will want to start a new account before you close your existing account and under no circumstances get payday loans under the new account. You have to treat the payday loan habit like an addiction. If you are going to stop it then stop it because replicating the mistake will only make things worse for you.If you need money then get bad credit credit cards and pay them on time to build your credit. Pay more than the minimum payment and use them to pay bills so you can pay what you need to pay while building your credit. No debt consolidation company can legally advise you to close your account but sometimes it is the only way to keep the payments from being processed and causing you hundreds or even thousands of dollars in overdraft fees. For me this was the easiest way because I had so many loans and it would have cost me a $25 fee for every stop payment processed plus the bank could have missed some.I also want you to know that the cease and desist letter can be used for any type of debt collection and not just payday loans. It is important to know your rights and you can find them out online at the federal trade commission’s website where you can learn about the fair debt collection act. You will learn what creditors can and cannot do regarding the collection of your debts and how to stop inconvenient and harassing behavior.I do not encourage anyone to get a payday loan because it can get out of control so easily. If you must get a payday loan be sure to get one with low fees well below the normal $30 per $100 borrowed.