In the bedroom you can get away with having a cheap carpet because you’re not going to spend a great amount of time in there. Well, not a great deal of time on the carpet at least. So you just need a simple, reasonable quality carpet that looks nice, provides a little bit of cushioning and generally does the job without being too hard on the feet first thing in the morning.

This means you can get away with some seconds. Seconds are large pieces of carpet leftover from when someone has purchased a new carpet for their house. Often these leftovers (which are much bigger than off-cuts) span 15ft x 15ft. Although sometimes you need to hunt for the right sizes of carpet seconds.

Because these sections of carpet are too small for living rooms and other large areas, this makes them ideal as a cheap carpet for a bedroom, spare room or study.

But where can you buy seconds of carpet? While carpet showrooms sell off seconds and they will have a wide range to choose from, they will charge you an arm and a leg for them. In some instances you’re better off buying a brand new carpet for the same price. Obviously, this isn’t what you want when shopping for cheap carpet.

The best place to buy cheap carpet is from a small, specialist carpet store. These are often tucked away behind the big carpet showrooms or located nearby in the same retail park or industrial area.

Carpet showrooms will charge you for not only your carpet, but for installation and delivery of the carpet. A small carpet specialist will only charge you for the carpet and installation.

As the chap I bought cheap carpet seconds from said “Why charge for delivery? We’ve got to be there and install it anyway.”

Not only did I escape the £30 delivery charge, I was able to purchase a much nicer quality carpet for £100 cheaper than the seconds on display in the big showroom.

So when shopping for cheap carpet, remember that the small carpet specialists are your friend when it comes to quality and cost.

If you are one of the lucky people that are paid in cash, but have trouble making purchases online, the ideal solution is here. A prepay Maestro card!

There are certain times that we want to keep money separate, whether it’s the wife or the tax man, a prepay debit card from Splash is a great way to transfer cash into a separate account. All you need is a UK address, and pretty much anyone over the age of 10 can sign up for one. It’s free from credit checks and not linked to a bank account.

The card is great for keeping control of your finances, you can avoid running up debt by avoiding going overdrawn and you aren’t borrowing any money from anyone. You are unlikely to get any interest on the money that you prepay, but if you need to be able to spend electronically rather than cash (such as online shopping) then it’s a great way of avoiding that line on your bank statement!

You can sign up for a prepaid Maestro card at Splash Plastic.

Have you got an old mobile phone sitting in a draw that you are never likely to use again? Have you thought about recycling it? You’ll never retire from the amount you will get for it, but it’s certainly worth the effort. We were surprised to hear that you could get £33 for an old Nokia N70!

One of Priceculture.com’s editorial team has recently sold his old mobile phone…

Mobile phone recycling companies have started popping up all over the place, and I have even started to see them being advertised on TV. I’m usually a little sceptical of these types of companies, but after selling one of my old mobile phones for £33, I thought it was a great deal! It’s the kind of thing that I would have just chucked out without realising its worth.

One of the TV ads prompted me to do a quick Google search for “mobile phone recycling” and I’d had a quick browse around the sites that were offering to ‘take my old mobile off my hands’. I’d remembered that I had an old Nokia N70 in one of the draws upstairs, so was intrigued to see how much I could get for it. One of the main sites, fonebank, was offering me £33! I thought that was a good deal, I mean it’s not like I was ever going to use it again.

I’d decided to go with fonebank, as they seemed like one of the more reputable companies by their websites image. Everything also seemed to be pretty straightforward and hassle free. Just a quick sign up form later and I had printed off a slip to send with my old phone. Popped it in a jiffy bag and off she went. I was pretty surprised that they just wanted the handset, which was lucky really as I had lost all of the chargers and boxes that came with it!

A few days later I received a note to say that they had received the phone and the cheque would be on its way. True to their word, the cheque arrived a few days later and banked without any problems. It’s true to say that only some phones will raise good money, It appears that Nokia handsets seem to be the most sought after my both the recycling sites and the consumer. I did a quick look to see how much my practically brand new Blackberry would be, and I think the offer was even less than for my 3 year old N70!

It’s certainly worth seeing if you can get a good price for your old mobile phone, and I would say that it’s only going to go down in value the longer you leave it, so get what you can for it now!

There are a number of companies that recycle mobile phones, mobile phone xchange and envirofone to name a couple. Give them a try.

As a family who goes out and does their weekly shop in store, it’s been pretty hard to accurately compare just how cheap Tesco’s is against ASDA for example. Personally, I have seen quite a few items cheaper in ASDA over the past few weeks, such as fruit, but with all of the TV advertising Tesco would have us believe say that they are cheaper on nearly everything!

Ordering shopping online has been easier and easier over the past few years, and it’s a convenient way to have your supermarket do some of the ‘grunt work’ if you are ordering heavier items such as cat litter! Being able to save your previous orders makes one click shopping a reality these days, but the downside is trusting the supermarket staff to select the best fruit, for example on the shelves. It doesn’t always happen!

In the same way that beatthatquote.com has helped us save hundreds of pounds on car insurance, a new website has now been launched that now lets you compare your supermarket basket online. Sites like mysupermarket.co.uk allow you to compare prices from Tesco, Sainsbury’s, ASDA and Ocado and even claim to help you save calories!

Amongst other sites,  mysupermarket.co.uk is just another great tool for saving money on the essentials. If you wouldn’t think about buying car insurance without using a price comparison website, why not use them for your grocery shopping?

Once you have your account set up, do some reconnaissance work before listing all of your household goods or bidding your life savings away. While eBay is reasonably user friendly, there are many other things you will need to know.

Look at what other people are doing

The biggest mistake first time sellers make, having signed up is to start selling right away without checking what other sellers are writing in their auctions, which categories they’re placing their items in or, more importantly, how much their starting bid is. You won’t get any bids if your item is in the wrong place at the wrong price.

Get positive feedback of at least 5

This is very important. Due to the popularity of eBay and the lack of trust from individuals trading online opposed to bonified retailers, few eBayers will bid on an item listed by a seller with a rating of 0.

This means you’ll have to buy something. Five somethings to be exact. But don’t worry, eBay purposely set up a “Weird Stuff” section for these items, which are often listed for 10p with free postage to help you increase your feedback scores so you can begin selling safely.

Always take a photograph of your item

No photograph, no bids. It’s as simple as that. You can write the best description in the world, but unless bidders can see it, they won’t want to buy it.

Get a Paypal account

Nowadays having a Paypal account is an integral part of eBay. Every eBayer pays using Paypal. In fact, Paypal has become so universally accepted that numerous online retailers with their own successful websites offer Paypal as an alternate means of payment, which many online shoppers use in preference to paying with their credit cards or debit cards.

Although Paypal incurs a small charge for the recipient of funds through a transaction, its ease of use far outweighs the risk of receiving cash or a cheque in the post.

Once you’ve received the funds for your sale, the money will sit in your Paypal account until you transfer it to your bank account (with a further small charge incurred) or until you spend it by shopping with an online retailer that accepts Paypal payments or win an auction by bidding on eBay. If you’re looking to make money from your sales, try your best to avoid the temptation of spending it all on eBay as soon as you receive the funds!

Don’t bite off more than you can chew

Once all your selling’s done and your Paypal account is full of money, don’t forget you have to physically post all those parcels. So make sure you don’t sell more than you can comfortably package and post out.

Happy eBaying!

While eBay will often charge extortionate after sales fees for selling your second hand goods, let alone actually selling them for a worth amount, you can quickly cut out the surprise charges with one simply payment of between £8 and £10 for a pitch. Simply park up the car, unload your goods onto a fold out pasting table and start selling to a large and eager audience of bargain hunters.

Car Boot Sales play host to all manner of goods from clothes to sporting goods, work tools, car parts, plumbing and even children’s toys. Most items are also in excellent condition and during the warm summer months people flock in their thousands to farmer’s fields in the hope of a chance purchase before the Sunday roast is ready.

While specialist products require a niche eBay market, the general every day items that sell for a pittance on the web or not at all are in high demand at Car Boot Sales and with a huge number of bargain hunters raiding the stalls for all they’re worth, it’s the most cost and time effective way to get rid of your household goods and see a valuable return in the process.

And should you be a bargain hunter yourself, you will be amazed at what you can pick up for a under a fiver. Just don’t get your hopes up looking for a rare item to auction on eBay, but you never know your luck.

So check your local paper for the biggest Car Boot sale near you. Most car boot sales run from June through to September, starting at 7am for sellers to set up and opening to the public at 9am.