And no, we’re not suggesting that you’ll find enough loose change in between those sofa cushions to make you a pretty sum. However, there are items in your home that could be turned into cash fairly easily, if only you know where to take them. If you want to pad your bank account with a quick tidy, here’s where to begin.

By far the best place to start with your tidy is your wardrobe. There are several kinds of places that will give you cash for your old, yet lightly used clothing. Vintage designer shops, thrift stores, and contemporary second-hand fashion retail places are all locations where you can make money after clearing out your wardrobe. You can take everything from clothing that doesn’t fit you anymore to items that you no longer want because they are out of season. Some big ticket items that you may want to focus on because they’ll bring in more money are leather accessories, designer clothes and handbags, and jewellery.

If you’re still up for the challenge after tackling the wardrobe, you should head to the bookshelf to sort through all of those novels and journals. Paperback books may not get you very much money, but if you have any old college textbooks lying around, they can bring in serious cash. Another potential kind of money-maker is collectible magazines, or editions that reflect historic moments featured on the covers. And remember, if you can’t sell them, you can at least do something good for the environment and recycle them.

And who can forget about those dozens (or maybe hundreds, if you’re a music fanatic) of CDs from the last three decades? If you’re no longer into the Cranberries but are stuck with their entire discography, now is the time to take action. You can actually be making money off of your old discs without having to give up your music. In the age of the digital music player, all you have to do to keep your entire music collection within the push of a button is convert them all to mp3 format. You can keep digital music files on your computer, on a cloud drive, or on your digital music player, leaving you free to sell the discs and make some extra cash.

You can sell discs at second-hand record stores, or you could post them on any number of user-generated selling sites online. Gumtree and Craigslist are both useful sites for making money from your music, allowing you to post information about the discs that you want to sell online and then receiving offers from interested buyers. However, if you don’t want to put the work into selling your discs, you could also use musicMagpie, which will give you a cheque for a group of discs without you having to interact with potential buyers.

If you have DVDs, video games, or computer games, you can also opt to get rid of those to make some extra cash. You may even be able to convert your movies to digital format in the same way that you stored your music so that you can still watch them anytime you would like. When you get into the habit of thinking “I can sell my old DVDs with musicMagpie”, along with your CDs, you could potentially double your profits without doubling the work.

Now that you know the routine, you can make a quick quid periodically by cleaning the house. Even if you hate doing chores, you’ll love the extra income!

Dating can be one of the most nerve racking experience in a person’s life, it can also end up being one of the most expensive too, especially if your other half doesn’t present themselves to you by your 21st birthday. It is easy to get wrapped up in the excitement of a new romance and want to treat your new beau to everything under the sun, while you enjoy your new found love haze, your finances could be feeling completely drained if you let your heart run off without your head however.

Digest these money saving tips and repeat them to yourself before you get in too deep with your next catch so you can date in the knowledge that you’ll have enough to make it out the other side should things go array.

Etiquette

Manners are free, for both men and women the way a man or women behaves is often far more important than where he or she takes you for the date.

Put some thought into the venue, and while it needn’t be the Ritz or anything, ensure it is a comfortable setting hopefully with a bar that serves a range of beverages.

Top money saving tips: Men – act like gentlemen and open the car door, pull your date’s chair our, and offer to pay for the first drink, and even if the venue isn’t as swanky as you would have liked, she’ll be left with a glowing impression of you.

Sweet nothings

Flowers, chocolates, bottles of wine, they all mount up, especially when you’re in the beginning stages of a relationship. While all these items are appreciated, other more personal gifts can be equally if not more so and are usually a cheaper alternative.

Resist the temptation to go out for dinner every week – not only is it not good on your waistline it’s also not kind to your wallet. If going out for a meal is only done occasionally it will feel like more of a treat.

Top money saving tip: Decide on a tasty three-course meal to cook and give yourself plenty of time to have fun in the kitchen cooking up a feast. This is a good way to see how well you work together too, and you will probably surprise yourself with the end product.

Holiday retreats

So, you’ve got to the stage where you want to take a trip together. Well done, it sounds like it’s getting serious. This however is a black pit where money is concerned so make sure you think this through. For instance, a road trip sounds oh so appealing in a Bridget Jones/ Thelma and Louise way, but the reality of our modern world means we have little holiday to frit away on days and days of travelling, and think about how much the petrol is going to cost too. If you are organized you can book a great deal on trains in the UK and these can take you from London to Edinburgh in about four and a half hours. At the beginning of a relationship it doesn’t really matter where you go as you are almost certainly going to enjoy yourself so leave the long haul flights to your honeymoon.

Long-distant relationships

Long distant relationships are becoming more and more common as people become more ambitious with their careers and settling down to start a family is pushed back to later life. Whether you are a student pursuing a long distant relationship with your high school love who goes to a university in a different part of the country, or a high-flying professional whose move was purely career motivated, all those long daily phone conversations and journeys from yours to there’s can rack up.

When you see each other less there is also always that inclination to spoil each other with gifts as each time you visit it is extra special because it doesn’t happen as often as you would like. As in tip number one, make things yourself to cut costs or get baking and turn up with some home-made chocolates or other baked delights.

Top money saving tip: Communicate via different forms other than the phone – write a letter for example or sign up to Skype – you can enjoy a video chat for free.

Dating can be an expensive game, especially for those who take their chances with online dating and find themselves bogged down with a list of endless dates. It is important to be aware of how much you spend when going out for dinner and drinks and to ensure the little treats do not add up to an unaffordable bill, as debt is never good for a relationship.

Bio: Anna Lisinski writes about money saving tips for www.telegraph.co.uk/personalfinance offering unique ideas into how to enjoy life on a budget.

The ten pin bowling game, or just bowling for short, is enjoying a renaissance. Bowling was very popular during the swinging sixties and survived through to the late seventies, but it failed to keep pace with changing and increasingly sophisticated tastes and fashions of the eighties and, as a result, it was abandoned by the public. Bowling alleys were forced into liquidation and the majority of them were repurposed as bingo halls and supermarkets or demolished to make way for new shopping arcades.

It was towards the end of the eighties that the revival of the sport began. The availability of new technologies meant that it had become possible to give bowling a facelift. One particular advance was the introduction of automatic scoring systems which had two major benefits: no longer was it necessary to calculate the score using fairly complex rules; and even more importantly the barrier to playing the game had been lowered as no longer was it necessary to understand the complex scoring system; instead the score was calculated by a computer.

More and more people decided to go bowling for their entertainment and as a result more and more bowling alleys were constructed. These were very different from the kind of alleys that had been popular in the sixties. No longer were they just places to go bowling; as time went by they were developed into entertainment centres that included many alternative activities suitable for all tastes and they also became very family friendly.

Bowling has grown to be the most popular participatory sport in the world. More people bowl than participate in any other sport; it is claimed that worldwide over a hundred million people go bowling and that bowling alleys can be found in over ninety countries.

There are many reasons for the popularity of the sport and an important one is its learning curve. Once the basic rules have been understood it does not take very long for a compete novice with average abilities to gain sufficient skills to be able to bowl over at least a few pins. Once that has been achieved progress can be quite rapid and after only a few games the beginner is playing well enough to enjoy the game; before very long, sufficient skills will have been developed to enable the player to enjoy a game with any average player.

However, moving up in ability level from average player to very skilled requires ascending a much steeper learning curve, and moving up to expert and championship levels requires complete dedication to the sport.
Above all, ten pin bowling is fun and it is an activity that can be enjoyed by the whole family, with a group of friends, or as a club sport.

With the cut off point for this years ISA allowance fast approaching you may find yourself wondering what you could do to put more in to your ISA for next year. There are lots of little things that you could do each week to help you make some extra money.

Find a second job.

If you have some spare time in the evenings or at weekends then you can consider looking at a second job. You could perhaps look at a job for a few hours each evening or one that you work just at weekends. This will allow you to still have some free time while making some extra money that you could save.

Clean out your home.

If you have lots of clutter around your home or unwanted gifts then why not consider selling them on eBay. For a few minutes work you could easily make yourself some extra pounds with basically no effort. You could also look on Facebook and other social networking sites for selling groups near to where you live. This can be a simple way to sell your items with no percentage lost to eBay or Paypal fees and it can mean that the clutter is shifted much faster as people from your local area come and pay for your unwanted items.

Look at your shopping bill more carefully.

By simply checking your receipt you can ensure that you are getting the discounts for your special offers in store. You can also look at switching to some different brands in store. My trying a supermarket own brand or even a supermarket value brand you could save pounds every week on your shopping bill with little or no taste difference. Some value brands are even the items from more expensive packets just without the expensive packaging and marketing behind them. If you have a printer you can even check the internet for special offers. Many companies are now on social networking sites and they have their own pages for you to ‘like’ and be kept up to date on their special offers.

Check your utilities & other household necessities.

If you have car insurance, home insurance or any of the other general necessities when owning a vehicle and running a home then you could save a small fortune by checking your current deal against others available. Try uswitch.com if you are looking to compare prices on gas, electricity, credit card charges, home insurance, vehicle insurance, pet insurance, medical insurance and a whole host of other products. You could save hundreds of pounds a year for just one evenings work.

Collect your spare change.

Keep a moneybox at home and put all of your small loose change in it. Every month try and make the effort to take this change to the bank (many have automatic coin counting machines now) and use this money to transfer to your ISA. It is amazing how a small amount of change can add up over the year. You could add an extra hundred pounds or more to your ISA just by saving your loose change.

Make use of your talents.

If you have a special talent or you are knowledgeable in a field then consider offering lessons, tutoring or doing some public speaking. You can ask your local college or school if they are looking for people to come in and show off a talent. You may need a CRB check first but many employers would be willing to pay for this for you.

If you are looking to pay some money in to your ISA now then remember that the allowance is currently £10,680 for the year 2011/12 and this include the cash ISA allowance of £5,340. The deadline is looming with April 5th soon coming round!

The ISA allowance for 2012/13 is going to be £11,280 including £5,640 so you can save an extra £300 on the current cash ISA allowance.

A little goes a long way in an ISA so try and set yourself a saving aim every month and use a small notepad to help you keep count of where you have made savings and where you could potentially make savings in the future.

Buildings and contents insurance are designed to help provide you with peace of mind for your home – and possessions. But do you know which policy is right for you?

Our useful guide will help you get to know the ins and outs of both policies – so you can choose the right one for you.

First of all you need to know that buildings and contents insurance are different. Buildings insurance  covers the structure of your home. And contents insurance covers the things inside it. If you could pick your house up and give it a shake, all the things that would fall out – the TV, the washing machine, the furniture – should be covered by contents insurance. And the things that would stay behind, like the walls and windows, should be covered by buildings insurance.

So what will buildings insurance cover – and who needs it?

Buildings insurance will cover the main property. It could cover your home for damage-causing events like storms, lightning, flooding, fire, vandalism and plumbing disasters. And it could even pay out for accommodation if you can no longer live in your home due to an insured event.

If you own the property and have a mortgage, your mortgage provider will insist you get buildings insurance – this is because they’ll want to know the investment is safeguarded. However, if you own your house outright, you don’t have to take it out. But if something bad happens, and your home is not covered, then you could lose it altogether.

If you own a flat, it’s slightly different as the freeholder may provide buildings insurance, but this isn’t always the case and you will need to check.

Finally, if you rent your property you don’t normally need to worry about buildings insurance – it’s usually your landlord’s responsibility, however it’s still wise to check your tenancy agreement for the level of insurance you will need to take out.

What does contents insurance cover – and who needs it?

This type of cover can insure your household belongings against loss or damage. It covers the things you’d take with you if you moved home – electrical items, furniture and valuables – normally up to a set limit. You can even extend your cover to safeguard some things against accidental damage, like spillages on your carpets – but this cover is likely to cost you a little extra.
Regardless of whether you own or rent your property, you should consider contents insurance. It’s the one thing you can do to protect your belongings. And unlike buildings insurance, a mortgage provider won’t insist that you take it out – so it’s up to you to arrange it.
Getting the right policy for you
It could be that after reading this you realise you only need one policy – or perhaps that, in fact, you need both. If you need both buildings and contents insurance, you don’t have to take them out with the same insurance company – but you will often get various benefits if you do.

One thing to remember with all insurance policies, is that they vary between providers. And although it may not be much fun – you should always read what your policy covers.

If you’d like to find out more about buildings and/or contents insurance for your home, why not visit www.halifax.co.uk to find out more?

A high customer retention rate is a sure sign your business is doing well. That’s why finding ways of boosting brand loyalty is a key activity for any company.

Promotional gifts can be ideal in fostering a long-lasting association with your brand among your clients. Whether they’re printed mugs, branded flash drives or personalised clothing, freebies can certainly do the trick in encouraging repeat business!
So, how exactly does this type of brand marketing work?

Everybody likes presents…
Promotional gifts take advantage of one of life’s givens – everyone likes to get something for nothing. Send your customers a corporate gift and you can be sure they’ll experience the initial pleasure that comes from receiving a freebie.

Of course, the success of your promotional gift hinges on more than this first moment. So, you will need to ensure the product in question can keep making the recipient happy.
…but everybody loves useful presents

To prevent your customer from simply throwing away their gift or stashing it in a drawer, never to be used again, it’s a good idea to give them something they will make use of.

Consider who your clients are, the setting in which they work and the kinds of objects they are therefore most likely to utilise. If you have corporate clients who operate in a formal office, think about giving diaries, stationery, clocks and other desk-friendly items printed with your logo.

Alternatively, you could settle for the safe option of products that most people will probably use. Promotional mugs and umbrellas are good bets, as are those longstanding favourites, personalised pens.

Give to impress
If you really want to push the boat out and form a long-lasting impression in the minds of your clients, there are plenty of promotional items you could opt for instead of the above.

Chocolates, impressive hampers, digital photo frames and business bags can all be printed with your logo and offer that wow factor, ensuring your clients remember your generosity for some time to come.

Returning customers
The result of all this careful planning and really thinking about what will please your customers could well be increased brand loyalty.

Not only will the recipient remember that you’ve given them something for nothing, but they will also keep being reminded of this every time they use your gift.

Almost six in ten respondents to a survey by the BPMA said they felt more positive about a particular firm after receiving a promotional gift, with 79 per cent stating they are more likely to do business with that organisation as a result.

Of course, there’s no reason to stop there. Other channels can help cement your company in clients’ minds even further; email marketing, social media and direct mail are just a few of the other ways in which you can keep in touch with your customers.

Combining promotional gifts with your other marketing efforts in this way – all the while being careful not to spam your clients – can lead to an effective brand loyalty-enhancing campaign.
So, use printed products in the right way and you could make a real impact on your business’s operations by keeping customer retention rates as high as possible. It’s worth testing to see if it really does work, so why not give it a try for a short period?

If you’ve seen success with a similar brand loyalty campaign, let us know below!

Do you know about Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) reclaims? If you have had a loan, credit card or any other type of credit in the last 10 years you could be entitled to more money.

Although, there are several online financial agencies which claim to settle the issues for clients but they charge nearly 30 percent of the compensation if the client wins.

This may lead the client to get no more money than he had lost otherwise in mis-sold PPI. The client or the victim who has been flogged off through the PPI may also tend to lose almost a quarter of the money which would be of no use ultimately.

There has been a wealth of information about the modus operandi or the entire process as how to claim for the mis-sold PPI. You can use a PPI claims company, but if you do go down this route it is important that you compare prices, as you would, for example, when you are looking to compare car insurance quotes online.

If you do go down this route yourself, firstly, you should make contact with the bank or lender who has sold PPI to you explaining why you think you mis-sold.

You should add copies of any original documents. Then, you will have to wait. The bank has eight weeks to respond. If you get no appropriate response from the bank then he must contact the Financial Ombudsman Service and give them the same evidence. There is a reasonable chance of success that you will get what is due in form of compensation.

You can reclaim for each policy that was sold, whether they are with the same or different banks. Just complete a separate form for each claim.

It is upon the bank to decide whether the case for claim is eligible or not. The bank would look at whether the info you were given when you signed up meets the regulator’s guidelines. These state that the bank should not have pressurised you to buy, should have checked you were eligible, told you all the exclusions and price, and ensured the sale was fair.

A payday loan is essentially a cash advance that is given to a borrower against his or her next month’s income.  There are various pros and cons to obtaining this type of loan and these bare thinking about to weigh up prior to borrowing from pay day loan providers.  Factors that are vital to think about include the financial capacity of the borrower to be able to pay the loan back.  Also keen awareness of the high interest rate of such a loan is important. Have a look at  MoneySupermarket payday loan to find out more information.

Pros

A borrower can have bad credit history, but this does not inhibit the ability to get a pay day loan. There is no traditional credit check performed, but rather proof of employment is sought and the assurance that the money will be paid back within a specified period.

For the purposes of a repairing a car, financing a family holiday or something along those lines, a pay day loan provides the funds for this immediately and with relatively little hassle compared to applying for a loan at a bank or building society.

Paperwork is generally uncomplicated.  All of this should take less than 30 minutes and include personal details such as name, address and information about a current and active bank account.

The turn-around time is swift and after approximately 24 hours, the funds should be deposited into the borrower’s bank.

Cons

A pay day loan can be supplied in only small amounts of approximately £300 to £700. This can be an inconvenience when extra money is required immediately.

Even though the loan amount is relatively small, the interest rate is so high that this poses a serious financial risk to the borrower in regards to paying the loan back in its entirety.

There is normally a very quick time-frame in which to pay back the borrowed funds to the lender, normally 14 days.  Failing to do so may mean exorbitant fees of up to 300% interest. These may be applied to the borrower’s account and may further affect the credit status.

The interest rates for such loans are generally from 200-500% once the initial payback period has lapsed and so it’s important that the borrower has the means to pay back the loan, otherwise the debt will spiral.

You may think that turning off a light switch here or there won’t amount to much when it comes to energy savings, but consistency is exactly how pennies are turned into pounds. Every way that you can think of, big and small, can help you pocket more of your money when it’s time to pay the electricity bill, so here are five to get your started.

1. Wait until night time to use your clothes dryer. Admitted, your dryer uses the same amount of energy no matter what time of day you use it, but the time of day may affect how much harder your air conditioner has to work during the warmer months to offset its heat production. If you use your clothes dryer after midnight, you (and your HVAC system) will benefit from a house that is already cooler. It may also save money since electricity costs less during these off-peak hours. Or even better, you could hang dry your clothes and skip the dryer altogether.

2. Cook smarter. There are loads of ways to save energy in the kitchen, which is probably the part of your house that requires the most of it. When you cook on the stove top, match pot sizes with burner sizes to make sure you’re not wasting the power it takes to heat up that stove. An even better solution would be to use the microwave to heat smaller portions since it uses significantly less energy than the stove. You can also save time — and energy — by using a steamer basket on top of a pot to cook several ingredients of your meal simultaneously.

3. Research new energy companies. If you haven’t checked in on the providers in your area since you signed with your current energy company, there could be some better, cheaper providers that you could be doing business with. This can make a huge difference, especially with rising energy prices, and finding some alternatives usually only takes a few minutes thanks to information that you can find online.

4. Clean your refrigerator coils. Of all the appliances that we run constantly, the refrigerator is perhaps the most important. But you can make sure you’re not paying more than you should be for energy by cleaning the dust off of your refrigerator coils because the dirtier they get, the more power it takes to keep your food chilled at the perfect temperature. You may also want to consider upgrading your refrigerator if it is nearing a decade old. Newer appliances are much more energy efficient, so this would turn out to be a worthy purchase once you total your energy bills for the year.

5. Be vigilant with phantom power loads. Most electronics, from your television to your stereo, function on standby power, which means that they’re not really “off”, even when you hit the switch. This can amount to a significant waste of energy each month. As a rule of thumb, if it has a light, even when the power button is in the off position, it’s sucking unnecessary power out of your outlets. Unplug these items completely to make sure this doesn’t happen.

From changing your kitchen habits to becoming an informed consumer with uSwitch, these five tips can help you chisel away at the sky-high energy bills that you shell out pounds for every month. But don’t stop here; take the conservation challenge to figure out more ways that you could be saving on electricity.

Over the past two decades, policy makers and concerned citizens alike have put more of a spotlight on the growing demand for energy in the UK as well as the growing need to produce it using cleaner methods. By 2020, these parties hope to derive at least 15 per cent of all the energy used in the UK from renewable methods. Good Energy not only believes in that goal but wants to take it a step further–to make the UK a 100 per cent renewable energy nation by 2050.

Why green energy?
Green energy has many benefits over the traditional methods of burning fossil fuels for electricity. To begin, it helps to reclaim the environment that is being destroyed by carbon emissions, which is an investment in our world for future generations to enjoy. But switching to a 100 per cent renewable energy scheme has many more benefits that can be reaped upfront. Good Energy, the UK’s only completely renewable of all the renewable energy companies, has demonstrated how using renewable sources makes energy consumption more intuitive, for example. Unlike traditional energy sources that rely heavily on “The Big Six” and are often subject to price increases, their energy comes from local suppliers, which creates a more tangible bond between consumer and seller. It also establishes an energy market with more competition, which means that the consumer always wins.

What’s in it for me?
Because families have to put their best interests first, it is not uncommon for them to question how switching to renewable energy will help them. The most beneficial outcome to switching to green energy for families is the financial benefit that they reap, both immediately and in the future. Having an energy source that doesn’t have to bow to the pressure of geographic and political conditions ensures that your household budget won’t need shuffling due to unexpectedly higher prices for electricity. And as the energy industry expects prices to continue to rise over the years, a switch to green energy now is a hefty investment in your family’s financial future. Also, becoming a green energy consumer puts you in the mindset to embrace the latest energy technology, which is an advantage that cannot be expressed in pounds or cents.

Getting your family on board
Once you have decided to make the switch, talking to your family about green energy can be an enjoyable and educational process. One of the benefits of using a company like Good Energy is that you will always know where your energy comes from, and passing this information along to your family can be a way to keep you all on track with green habits. You can also make a challenge out of thinking of ways that everyone can conserve more energy around the home so that good energy habits stick with all of you for years to come.

Taking all of these facts into consideration, the grass is sure to be greener — along with the entire UK — by 2050. Join the challenge today.