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An extra income is always a desirable thing, but perhaps even more so when it comes off the back of junk you might even have been considering throwing out!! Here are 5 ways to earn a little something extra through your rubbish!

Sell Your Old Mobile

Envirophone.com is just one of many websites that will pay you for your old mobile phone, irrespective of its condition. Many of us have at least one old mobile hanging around the house, stuffed in the back of a drawer! Cash them in! An old Sony Ericsson K800i would fetch £22.09. It’s worth checking out a number of websites doing this to compare the rates you’ll be offered for your phone. Mobilephonexchange.co.uk will pay you slightly higher rates than Envirophone for a number of models and give you a choice of payment in cash, Argos vouchers, Debenhams gift cards or M&S gift cards. Taking the gift cards means you get more value.

Get rid of your old CDs

Many of the tech savvy among us have completely stopped using CDs now and tend to buy our new music in the form of downloads. In my case, this means boxes and boxes of old and unused CDs sitting around clogging the place up. You can sell CDs, DVDs and games through Music Magpie. All you do is type in the barcode numbers of the items you want to get rid of and Music Magpie will instantly tell you how much they would pay you for it. You then decide which of the items you want to part with and they’ll send you freepost envelopes. You send the stuff, they send a cheque. The prices aren’t always great, but in terms of convenience, you can’t beat it.

Get rid of your old anything!

eBay! Need I really say more? It seems that on eBay there is always someone looking for what you want rid of. And what might be a space wasting piece of junk to you could be something pretty useful to someone else. So cash in. Flog your junk! Of course, the prices fluctuate massively with an auction format, but eBay is trustworthy, massively popular and simple enough to use.

Get crafty

Turn your old bits and pieces into quirky little craft items and sell them on. You can even turn your old clothes into costumes! There are a number of websites now geared at people specifically selling their own craft wares, if you prefer to use these as opposed to eBay. The biggest is perhaps Etsy which is a US based website, but welcomes international buyers and sellers.

Antique Dealers

Anything you have that is particularly old might be worth more than you think. What looks like an old worn out table might actually turn out to be fairly valuable and the only way you’ll know is by having it valued. Before you throw anything out or let it go for next to nothing, if it’s something particularly old do some basis research online and, if you think you might be onto something, take it to an expert. You might get more than you bargained for!

As tempting as it is just throw the junk out and be done with it, you can quite easily make a little bit of cash from it with very little effort. And then of course, if you’re anything like me, you’ll use that cash to buy the junk of tomorrow!

The Office of Fair Trading is crusading again. Well, less of a crusade and more of a quick peek really. They are ow investigating ‘Cash-for-Gold companies,’ who, they believe, may be taking advantage of consumers in debt by paying them ludicrously low rates for their gold.

The OFT is specifically challenging 5 companies and asking them to clarify and explain certain claims made in their advertising material and on their websites and to come clean about certain business practises. The watchdog claims that this is to ensure that these particular companies are complying with consumer protection laws.

This follows a number of consumer groups urging people not to use such services. Which? warned consumers of terrible value for money when using such companies to cash in their gold. And Which? it seems have done their research. They sent off three items worth, in total, over £700 to a number of gold companies to establish that they offer an average of 6% of the retail price.

Gold buying services have increased in popularity as the financial belts of Britain have tightened in the midst of the worst recession in a generation. However, there are now huge concerns that, rather than being a potentially useful service for cash strapped consumers, such businesses are offering rates so low that it could almost be considered a con!

The advice of the experts is that, if you must sell your gold, shop around and check pricing with independent retailers too.

Despite the fact that Natwest and the Royal Bank of Scotland are now largely publicly owned, the banks have made the decision, in the midst of the worst recession in a generation to raise the cost of credit, leaving the consumer grappling with even higher rates. Each raised purchase and balance transfer rates for both new and existing customers on their Classic cards by 3% from 16.9% to 19.9%. This comes in spite of the fact that the Bank of England have held the base rate at 0.5%. Meanwhile, the private banks are largely making their rates more competitive.

Experts tend to agree that the state owned banks are attempting an opportunistic move in their increases but the question is, will it backfire in light of decisions by other credit card providers not to increase rates?

Barclaycard, Egg and the AA have all extended their introductory 0% balance transfer periods for new customers and provider MBNA has introduced a card that offers a set 5.9% per year rate on balance transfers for life.

With other more competitively priced alternatives on the market, it seems that the publicly owned banks are setting themselves up to see many of their disgruntled customers walk away with their latest attempt to consolidate their own debts.

According to a survey conducted by the Post Office, consumers in the UK are thinking about their finances more than ever before, since the start of the recession. In particular, 16 – 30 year olds have changed perceptions of finances, with a quarter of this group claiming to have saved more money since the start of the recession.

The improved attitudes are largely being attributed to the fact that conversations around personal finances are being held more openly now and frugality and conservative spending are commonplace. Attitudes towards frugal living, in fact, have changed drastically since the beginning of the recession. Frivolous spending simply was not possible in the face of rising unemployment, continually rising living costs and less disposable income and so thrifty spending habits were adopted by families on all income levels. It is hoped that these habits long outlive the recession itself.

So is this a silver lining to the worst recession to have gripped the nation (and the world) in a generation? If the attitudes persist, then that in itself could go a long way to eradicating the huge personal debt problem prevalent in the United Kingdom and USA. Or will the attitudes fade as the global economy recovers? Will we start spending as thoughtlessly as we ever had and find ourselves, another generation from now, facing the same economic crisis?

In much the same way that Great Depression changed the lives of the Americans who lived through it and permanently altered their perception of money and spending habits, I believe that the scars of the current downturn will probably serve as enough of a reminder to have a long lasting impact on spending. For those of us who lived through it, at least.

The Government’s announcement last week, that it intends to introduce Money and Debt Management lessons into the National Curriculum for children as young as five, has been met with mixed reactions. While many believe this to be a potential solution to the personal debt crisis affecting British adults, others believe that we are enforcing overly ‘adult’ and complex themes onto children who simply have not even had chance to just be children.

Were you concerned about debt and money when you were five? Should you have been?

There are arguments on both sides for this matter. On the one hand we know that education is the key to dealing with a number of issues. When STDs and AIDs/HIV in particular rose to prominence in decades past, the nation began a comprehensive secondary education push on the topic (as well as a large marketing campaign). But can we really make money lessons work for children as young as five? Is it fair to expect them to grasp the concept or to even want to? And that will all come down to how these lessons are taught. Of course, if a teacher pulls out a finance guide in black and white and starts chirping numbers, there will be no progress. But if the lessons are made fun, easy to follow and yet challenging too in the right balance, this could have a real positive effect.

We previously have not offered money management lessons for children. Debt management lessons in schools have never been a part of the national curriculum. Instead, at 18, we launch teenagers into a society that lives largely on credit and into the Lions’ Den of lending institutions all too happy, ready and willing to offer copious amounts of credit to these people, whose shiny new credit records have yet to be tarnished. In essence, we give complete financial independence to people who have had no formal education around the topic. And the consequences of getting finance wrong at 18 can haunt consumers for years to come.

Why do we educate children at all? Simply to prepare them for the real world, to get them ready for a job and responsibility. Yet we have previously completely neglected to cover the topic of personal finance and debt management, one of the biggest responsibilities a child leaving school will face.

With that in mind, surely this introduction to the national curriculum of money management lessons for children can only be a good thing. Of course, we will not know how successful it has been for a number of years yet.

Figures released by Credit Action today reveal that a property is repossessed in the UK every 11.2 minutes. That’s 128 individuals or families losing their home every single day in the UK as a result of financial difficulties and a subsequent inability to pay a mortgage. Repossessions under certain circumstances are, unfortunately, unavoidable owing to the fact that secured debts (such as mortgages) cannot be taken care of with a debt management plan, IVA or similar debt restructuring plan.

The other statistics released give a good indication as to the possible cause of this issue, with over 2000 people every single day finding themselves being made redundant in the UK and over 9000 contacting the Citizens Advice Bureau in regard to debt. 1000 seek some sort of formal debt restructuring plan every single day.

The figures are pretty depressing entering the New Year, but there’s good news too. The rise in the rate of unemployment, though it does continue, is slowing down. The recession is expected to have formally ended during the final quarter of 2009 (something that will hopefully be confirmed soon) and the economy is expected to begin a very slow recovery. While it will be a long time before we are enjoying the financial boom of the early 2000s, things are certainly looking up.

This, however, will be little consolation for those whose homes have been repossessed as a result of personal debt or financial difficulties.

Following a disappoint bank charges verdict back in November, during which the Supreme Court overruled the decision of the High Court and Appeals Court that the OFT could assess the fairness of bank charges, consumers have been dealt another blow. The OFT decided to take some time following the disappointing Supreme Court hearing to assess what their next step would be. Despite hints by the Supreme Court that the charges could be challenged under another area of law, the OFT announced this morning that it will not be challenging further.

MoneySavingExpert.com, with the help of a QC compiled information this month that they believe opens up another legal avenue for challenging the fees. However, the OFT said this morning that while they had considered going forward under the Consumer Credit Act but believed it to be more appropriate for individuals to take their own individual cases to court.

What this unfortunately means is that two and a half years of work by the OFT has ended in defeat, with the banks essentially, as things stand, free to charge what they like. The OFT did address its concerns for the lack of transparency in bank charges and said it hopes to come to some voluntary arrangement with the banks over them.

Consumers will be disappointed. However, it is largely thought that one successful case brought to the courts by an individual will set a precedence for other cases.

Retailers are rubbing their hands this Monday morning, following the last weekend before Christmas. It seems that eager shoppers were more keen even than last year to get out, in spite of adverse weather conditions in many places.

The weekend got off to a spend-happy start with Friday 18th December being the busiest day for cash withdrawals this year. In the house between 12pm and 1pm, the great British public withdrew £24000 every second! And it’s this cash that was used to line the tills of the country’s biggest retailers.

Despite a year that has seen over 700000 jobs lost, the Brits are still happy to spend, spend, spend across the festive season, with John Lewis reporting an increase in sales of 15% on last year! Capital Shopping Centres, the company who own the Metro Centre in Gateshead and a number of others around the country have recorded 7 million people visiting their centres in the last week.

Of course, what remains to be seen is how much of this Christmas spending will return to haunt consumers in the New Year. January is typically a month which sees the highest number of debt defaults. However, experts are warning that, after a financially dismal 2009 and an extremely high number of job losses, that January 2010 could be a record breaker in all the wrong ways.

As consumers, we are frequently reminded of the importance of exercising sensibility with our money. The average personal debt in the UK is over £30000 and so employing some conservative spending tactics is sound advice.

But if you think that the average personal debt is high, then you’ll probably be somewhat stunned by the public sector net debt of Britain. Yes, that figure is a staggering £829.7 billion. Yes, billion. And it’s rising rather rapidly. To be specific our national debt increased by £4268 every single second. Concerning? You bet.

The people with the power have come under fierce scrutiny, both for the rate at which it is wracking up debt and for the fact that the public aren’t being informed of some of the more concerning forecasts.

There’s a budget deficit of £178bn in the UK right now. Put simply, that means that public spending is £178 billion more each year than the Government income (for example, from taxes) is. And the Government has been criticised for failing to deal with it.

While Government debt is nothing new, our excessive debts are even leading to our “credit worthiness” falling in eyes of other countries. Call this the Government equivalent of credit rating damage. For the first time, recently, lending to the British was considered more risky than lending to Spain. This could indicate some real problems going forwards.

Of course, Government debt in an economic downturn is almost impossible to avoid. But seeing how the Government handles its debt management going forwards will be interesting….

There has been so much talk of unfair bank charges over the past few years and, more recently, of the Supreme Court decision that threatens millions of consumers’ claims. But there’s far less media coverage about unfair credit card charges.

Yet unfair credit card charges are being successfully reclaimed by consumers as we speak and are an entirely separate issue from bank charges. This means that they were not affected by the recent bank charges verdict.

Consumer law states that any charges levied by credit card companies on their consumers for late payments, or for going over the credit limit, must be proportional to the costs they incur. Yet some credit card providers have been charging up to £35 to send an automated letter! In 2006, the OFT declared that this was unfair and said it would investigate companies making charges of anything over £12 (though many believe that £12 is also excessive)!

However, while the OFT’s stance on credit card charges has little in the way of technical authority, it has made successfully claiming credit card charges much easier for thousands of consumers.

If you have have been charged over £12 in credit card charges in the last six years, you could also claim back money. This applies even if you no longer have that particular credit card – literally to any credit card charges at all within the past six years.