By Thomas Haller and Chick Moorman

The holiday season is fast approaching and many parents are concerned about the family financial situation and the money problems they may be experiencing. As if rising food prices, stock market instability, and skyrocketing health care costs weren't enough, parents now have the added concern of finding available money to put a few presents under the Christmas tree or share a gift during the family's Hanukkah celebrations.

Kids have such soft, silky, sensitive skin.  I don't think any tissue can prevent a red, chafed nose when they get a bad cold.  I've tried coating the area with lotion, which feels like the skin is burning, and I have tried white petrolatum jelly and neither work well. 

My son was sick with the stomach flu recently, and because it kicked in during the night, he had a few accidents on the way to the bathroom. So at about 2 am, I was scrubbing puke out of my carpet in the dark with a flashlight. When I woke up I saw that there was still a stain, even though I had tried everything, including Woolite Oxy Deep spot and stain carpet cleaner.

With the holidays just around the corner and the economy the way that it is, it might help to try and cut wherever we can. I found this list online.  The only one I have not tried yet is the first one, getting rid of my landline and relying completely on the cell phone. My cell doesn't work ideally inside my home, so it would be tough to have that as my only phone. Here are the suggested tips:

Get Rid of Your Landline

Use your cell phone plan exclusively and save at least $25 a month. If you need to make international calls, encourage your overseas friends and family to join you in signing up for Skype.com, which offers free VOIP (voice-over-internet-protocol) services.
Weekly Savings: At least $8-$15

I was looking for a tips for removing pasta sauce stains from clothing and OCM readers came through with some awesome tips. We eat our fair share of spaghetti (yum) and the kids are always getting it on their clothes, even when wearing large bibs. I've tried soaking as soon as it happens, spot washing, etc. and nothing seems to work. I only luck out if it happens on white clothes and I can bleach it out!

Have you tried oxi-clean? It comes

A friend of mine called me one day because her son got Silly Putty stuck in his hair. She tried everything

Some of you may already know this, but there are three easy steps you should do as maintenance on a PC computer about once a week to keep it running as smooth as possible.

Now, I am no Geek Squad expert or anything, but these are some tips I have learned from other experts over the years and have found them to work great. Here are the tips (on Windows XP - may be different for Vista), and they need to be done in this order:

Deodorant stains can ruin a perfectly good shirt.

I recently went to one of my favorite grocery stores, Trader Joes. My son is on a gluten free diet and they informed me that they have a list/printout of