Getting your own place is not a cheap move, but I have a few tips to make it easier on the pocket

Here are my top tips for how to furnish your new home on a budget

Large items of furniture aren’t cheap, even if SCS and DFS always have a sale on!

If you are moving into your first home and starting from scratch this can get quite expensive so I suggest having some cash put away and don’t expect to furnish your house over your last 2 pay packets.

The Do’s and Don’ts of furnishing your home

Do

• Make a list of items you will need such as Sofas, a bed, storage, fridge, cooker, washing machine. These are your priority items, you can buy other furniture items as you go
• Measure your rooms, door ways, entrance halls etc to ensure any item of furniture you buy will fit in the property
• Check to see if you can hire a van rather than collecting large items from stores or paying for expensive delivery
• Haggle – If you are going to visit a store that have sales staff, there is always room for negotiation. I have managed to get a lot of things down in price in the past by saying ‘Oooo I didn’t want to pay that much’ ‘I’ll try elsewhere before I make up my mind’ ‘Well I was able to get a similar product at a different store for £40 less than this’

Don’t

• Be careful when hiring a man with a van from websites or social media – see this story for why!
• Pay expensive delivery charges if the item is small enough to fit in a taxi and the fare is cheaper
• Rent furniture – it will cost you a huge amount more in the long run and you are left paying high weekly payments

My top tips

• You will be able to get great quality furniture at rock bottom prices on ebay
• You could always try an ebay misspelling website too. It hunts out all the ebay bargains that have a typo in their title so they don’t don’t usually come up in regular search results, meaning these bargains would usually go unbidden on and unsold. 
• Use an ebay sniper tool website. The site knows when to put your bid in right at the very last second so that nobody else has the chance to respond meaning you are definitely going to be the final bidder and therefore win. Some people class this as playing dirty but it’s perfectly legal. 
• You can get the misspelling & sniper tool website here…
• Using an ebay bargain finder tool, you will be able to find all of the top bargains on ebay which are closest to you resulting in no P&P costs. Get the bargain finder tool here…
• Preloved is an online marketplace where you can pick up bargains, they are very good for picking up preloved furniture
• Gumtree is another online market place selling mostly used goods, some of the sellers will offer to deliver for the cost of fuel
• Charity shops are a great place to pick up bargains. There are often charity shops that specialise in large items of furniture
• Try car boot sales for preloved items
• There are furniture projects around the UK that can help families on low income furnish their property. Click here for more information on this…
• If you want to buy new furniture items, Ikea and Argos are usually very cheap
• For cooking utensils and similar, I would suggest supermarkets or cheap shops such as B&M & Home Bargains
• Only use ‘Buy now pay later’ if you think you can pay the item off before any interest is put onto your account or it can get expensive

Hopefully this guide will help if you are about to move into your first time home, or maybe you are just looking to refurnish.

Good luck in your new home 🙂