When it comes to your bedroom, the most important thing is your personal comfort. The importance of bedroom furniture cannot be underestimated. Many people think you need to spend a fortune in redecorating your bedroom. The good new is those people are wrong.

After years of being a student and countless moves from place to place, I've come up with a few things that can help you decorate your bedroom without breaking your budget. But before you get started, you need to get one thing straight: how much can you spend? Once you have a dollar amount in mind, the rest is pretty easy.

Start with what you need. Do you need new bedroom furniture? Take a list of the items you need. In terms of bedroom furniture, the single most important piece of furnishing is your bed. Regardless of how financially starved you are, you cannot afford to sleep on a cheap bed. Some people will make the mistake of evenly distributing their budgets across whatever bedroom furniture and bedroom accessories they feel they want. This is a huge mistake. Certain pieces, like dressers, nightstands, and shelves, can be acquired for little or nothing. Similarly, accessories don't take a slice out of your budget. The one piece that does matter is your bed. Having a cheaply constructed bed frame and a cheap mattress will cost you more in the end when it comes to health and personal well-being.

Other pieces of bedroom furniture you can find in thrift stores, alleyways, and Craigslist. My bedroom furniture collection is a combination of all three. If you're looking to do some thrift store shopping, stay away from trendy neighborhoods. Thrift stores in upscale neighborhoods are never cheap. In fact, most items in trendy thrift stores come from secondhand shops in low income areas. So do what I did - cut out the middle man and head right for the South Bronx (or whatever is your friendly neighborhood equivalent).

If you're not interested in perusing thrift stores, try alleyways in the upscale neighborhoods or cruise the suburbs the night before trash pickup. You'll be amazed what some well-off folks are willing to dump in a landfill. Their trash can be your treasure.

Craigslist is an amazing resource for free stuff. Anything from bedroom furniture to concert tickets, people are willing to give stuff away. And you can get in on the action with just a couple of clicks.

The most important thing I've learned about budgeting and decorating is that the lifecycle of your bedroom furniture (or any furniture for that matter) will outlive any type of accessorizing you can imagine. The furniture you can get for free. And it will last. Therefore, focus on the little things: lamps, books, art, etc. Those you can switch at any time for a whole new look.

And guess what: those are free/just-about-free too! Grab a few of those free weekly magazines, cut out some pictures, and put them on your wall. Trade stuff with your friends. This last thing is huge. You can literally cycle accessories within the same group of friends for years. Sometimes you can even manage to trade full on bedroom furniture pieces with your friends when your things get boring.

It's all about creativity. While budgeting can sometimes be a bit of a hassle, it can also teach you to tap into your creative resources and find alternate solutions. And that you will carry with you much longer (hopefully) than you will your (near) empty wallet.