askchapo

from the two times i bought mattresses and one time I sold one:

1. You at least used to be able to get a half-decent memory foam mattress for a few hundred bucks from online retailers. Since they can roll 'em up and vacuum seal them, it's easy for them to transport them. These are like 3-4 inches of memory foam, no box spring, but still decently comfortable especially if you're aiming to save up for a better one eventually.

2. Look for factory-direct local mattress retailers. May or may not exist near where you are, but in a larger city you've got a shot. They're like half the cost vs mattress firm or similar stores and ime the quality is better too.

3. Half a step above the shitstained road mattress: You could check to see if the people moving out of your new place are interested in selling theirs to you — since mattresses are hard to resell they might not plan on keeping it

If there's a Big Lots near you go there immediately. They're going out of business so everything's on sale. Might find a deal

Have you considered sleeping in a hammock? I've been doing it for years. Hammock+hammock stand was $99 total a few years ago.

Pros:

• take up less space than a traditional bed,
• you can wash the hammock in a washing machine
• cheap
• portable (I've brought mine to conventions when I was sharing a hotel room)

Cons:

• hard to sleep with someone else in a hammock
• maybe you can't sleep in a hammock
• sometimes you'll need to replace the hammock

The links others have posted for Zinus are good, they're very affordable and the same as all the other bed in a box foam mattresses. The big legacy brands like Sealy etc. are all scams which will sag in a year, avoid them.

If you live in a bigger city try going to a Chinese furniture store, they'll have decently priced mattresses that skip the brand markups. East Asians tend to sleep on harder mattresses though so the medium might be more of a firm to Westerners.

I got a £50 mattress from a second hand furniture store and put a £60 memory foam topper on it. Best sleep I've ever had.

I used to work for a data broker who would sell to clients to try to convince you to buy retail.

BUY IT FROM COSTCO or Sam's club if you must

Yeah get this bad boy

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0CKYZ4DJB

Just sleep on a tatami mat. They're cheap, small you can roll them up and put it away and their better then dropping a grand on something you sleep on. I'm weird though I also like hammocks. I have a big king size bed I sleep with a couple of other people in and it's hard, big, expensive and moving it is such a problem.

buy it on labor day and tell em uncle snoop sent ya

Maybe try some sort of mat made for sleeping on instead (like a mahjong mat). Harder surfaces like those are better for your back than soft mattresses

A cheap mattress would probably fuck up your back, I've never seen a cheap one that had a good firmness to it

Do you have a couch and if so, is it comfy? If sleeping on it is an option for a fee months I'd do that while trying out some of @crime@hexbear.net 's advice. That advice should still be a stop gap on the way to a good mattress tho, it is one of the few things in life that it's worth paying more for the best quality possible. You use it 8 hours a day ish. My back is an absolute place of devastation and I'm in my early 30s and it's for sure partially due to sleeping pretty much wherever I landed for a good 15 years. Bad couches, air mattresses, ditches, bushes, shitty cushions tsken from old futons in a pile. If you gotta slum it a bit until then it's probably worthwhile and if half decently cared for you should get a solid decade or so out of one.

If you want more time to make up your mind on a mattress, you can probably get a decent self-inflating twin size air mattress. You can sleep on that while deciding on something bigger, and then once you get the bigger one, you can continue to use the air mattress for guests and camping and stuff.

Mattress Firm has innerspring and foam for like $400, and you can see if they can be tried in a store near you #1 #2

im not recommending any brands, and you would still maybe need a base unless youre just going to put it on the floor.