Whenever I go to the store to pick up a few things to clean the house, I have noticed that there are more and more new kinds of cleaners and dusters; just basically a lot of things that I have never needed in the past to get my house clean.

I think that it’s important to show everyone that they don’t need Swiffers or Shamwows to clean their homes.
So here are a few tips to save you some money on the cleaning aisle and in your house when it comes time to clean up:

1) Paper towels can be a waste. While I think it is important to ALWAYS use a clean cloth to clean up in the kitchen, it isn’t necessary to have three rolls of paper towels to clean. Reusable towels are a good alternative to paper towels. You can clean up with them and throw them in the wash with your towels. This will also help reduce some waste that comes from your house.

2) Lysol or any other concentrated antibacterial cleaner is your best friend when it comes time to clean the kitchen. Before I discovered this tip, I can’t tell you how many bottles of pre-bottled Lysol or Formula 409 I went through cleaning up around the house (especially in the kitchen). One day while I was getting ready to mop the floor, I discovered that you can also use Lysol to clean counters. So, I put the recommended amount in a spray bottle and fill the rest of the bottle up with water. One bottle of concentrated cleaner can last our house 3 months (and that’s also using it to clean the floors).

3) Swiffer dusters are nice, but a wet cloth can do the same job. If you have a lot of knick knacks in your house and have to walk around and dust them every single week, then maybe a Swiffer duster will save you some time, but if you don’t, a wet cloth could be the cheap alternative that you are looking for.

4) Plastic bags from the grocery stores can be a good alternative to buying trash bags. Okay, unless you have completely started using reusable shopping bags, then I’m sure somewhere around your house you have some of those plastic shopping bags. I keep all of mine and use them as trash bags. This keeps us from having to buy trash bags. While you’re probably thinking that they are just too small to be used as trash bags in the kitchen trash, think about it this way: How often have you walked past your kitchen trash that you probably should have taken out yesterday? When you use smaller bags, you have to take the trash out more often and therefore, there’s less stink to deal with.

Now these tips might not be fore you or you can pick and choose which ones sound like something that you may give a try.

He will get over $23 million in installments for the remainder of his life. According to GM’s annual report he also is entitled to $366,602 in unvested stock awards and $534,627 in deferred compensation as of December 31, 2008.

Wagoner was told to step down by the government yesterday. He did so to ensure the longevity of GM…it’s actually kind of nice that he did that. In a way he sacrificed his job so thousands of others could keep theirs. However, $23 million is kind of like winning the lottery and he should be just fine.

As I was in the check out line a bright yellow display caught my attention. On the bottom shelf, Reese’s Easter eggs and Cadbury eggs.

I could not believe it. Just 50 feet away, the store is still trying to get rid of Christmas leftovers…and there is Easter candy already sitting out.

Now, this year Easter isn’t until April 12. That’s 4 months from yesterday. If I saw Christmas candy out before they had put away the pool toys, something would be wrong there too.

I am beginning to wonder when I’ll be able to go pick up my decorations for the fourth of July…

Some big names in consumer electronics made their press conferences today at the show. Names like LG and Samsung, as well as Cisco.

But tonight’s Sony event was probably one of the more anticipated of the showings.

Tonight at Sony’s press event, it introduced the Vaio P, which could be considered somewhat of a “super netbook.” The price for it is between $900 and $1500. The difference between the $900 model and the $1500 model is that the $900 has a 60GB HDD while the $1500 has a 128GB solid state drive. It is also the lightest 8″ laptop weighing it at 1.4 lbs.  The new entry was highly anticipated, but in my opinion, overpriced. Yes, it is Sony and it’s beautiful…but, it’s not worth the price, at least with my initial reaction (I can be persuaded though)… Here’s a picture via Sony.com

With consumer confidence falling, yet again, the economic outlook isn’t great when viewing it in the short term. However, there is a lot to look forward to in the New Year including some much needed lending from banks to consumers.

The retail chain has been in business for 99 years. Yesterday 200 of its stores closed and the remaining 600 are expected to close in the coming weeks.

In 1997, all the Woolworths stores in the United States closed its doors and the company is now only located in the United Kingdom.

Freddie Mac, the mortgage company, reported yesterday that average rates on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages dropped to 5.14 percent this week, down from the record 5.19 percent set last week. The rate was the lowest since Freddie Mac’s weekly mortgage rate survey began in April 1971 and the eighth straight week of declines. – AP

The mortgage rate will benefit those with plenty of equity in their homes or good/great credit…everyone else is still being left out.

Sure, the stores will close early tomorrow with bare shelves, but today you can fight with people for that last bath gift set.

It was a strange scene yesterday for me, while I was with a friend at Sephora, there were several men in the store looking…very, very lost. Sales associates in the store were trying as hard as they could to help them, but the guys were just still clueless. This is (even against my better judgment) a gift card is best. I can just imagine the present Chris would bring me home from Sephora (and what I could imagine would be funny).

I’ll be baking for the remainder of the day for tomorrow’s Christmas get together with our family, so I actually have to go to the grocery store for some holiday rush shopping.

This just proves further that OPEC needs to listen to what analysts are saying instead of thinking “short term.” The cut in production let everyone know just how low the global demand for oil has gotten.

U.S. oil supplies were also up 500,000 barrels, which is four times more than investors were anticipating.

After the shoe incident, Zaidi was “subdued” by security guards and was taken to a Green Zone hospital where he was treated for injuries sustained that included a broken arm and broken ribs.

While it is not known whether or not Zaidi had a lawyer present at the hearing on Wednesday, Saddam Hussein’s former lawyer Khalil al-Dulaimi said on Monday he was making a team of lawyers to defend him and 200 lawyers would be willing to give their services for free.

The White House said that it is up to Iraqi leaders to punish Zaidi.

Bush shoe-thrower appears before Iraqi judge

Just yesterday, estimates came out that said 10,000 jobs would be cut from the payroll, and the cuts would start by the end of the year.

The two companies combined would have more than 260,000 employees, and the majority of the cuts would be expected from Merrill Lynch’s side.

Like I said in a post about WaMu, the employees from the “losing” side knew that some of them would be cut. 30,000 employees of 260,000 is a good amount, but BofA probably was never going to try to run a company with that many employees.

Remember, there are no obligations for companies that have filed for bankruptcy to redeem gift cards. So, now that Circuit City has filed, you would think that they would no longer sell gift cards, but they do. So, any day the remaining stores could decide to no longer accept the cards.

I went to a Linens-N-Things last week to check out the liquidation sale, and all over the registers, doors, and other surfaces said that they were no longer accepting not only gift cards, but also store credit cards.

Good luck with gift cards this year if you decide to give them to your friends and family, and keep an eye on the news to get a heads up as to which stores are in trouble.

With that said, in the final hours leading up to the election, both candidates are promising change. McCain is doing his usual song and dance and Obama has reverted back to the message of change and hope…the message that inspired voters to get him on the presidential ticket.

The stock markets are also holding their breath to see who will be elected tomorrow. Today was not a huge swing in either way with the Dow closing five points down, while the NASDAQ ended up five points.

Somewhere I read online yesterday that 1 in 7 voters can still be persuaded. I don’t think the 2 percent of the population that CAN be persuaded are watching SNL, I think those potential voters are the ones who do not watch a lot of news or don’t really care about politics at all.

Last time John McCain was on SNL, he made me laugh a bit, only because he made fun of how old he is. Maybe tonight he can even make me chuckle a bit.

So, how does this all affect the average American? Sure, if you?re completely invested in one of the failing companies it is easy to see, but for someone who isn’t in the market but perhaps has a 401 (k) they may be worried about their financial future.

Because banks are playing defensively, they are doing whatever they can to protect their assets. This causes them to not want to produce any new loans, creating sub-prime loans and mortgages is what got most of these banks into this dire situation to begin with. Even student loans will be harder to receive, which could in itself become a disaster, because college tuition will not be going down any time soon (or ever). If a potential borrower does not have great or perfect credit, loans are and will be very hard to acquire.

When the crunch is over, though, many banks will be able to lend again to those with good credit, and those with great and perfect credit will be able to get their loans at better rates. The hardest part is waiting. It is hard to wait for a loan when you need a mode of transportation and can’t get a car loan though, as not everyone lives where there is a method of public transportation or a place close enough to anything to ride a bike.

If you’ve been working and deducting some of your paycheck into a 401 (k) for any length of time, the financial crisis is something to take a serious look at. According to financial adviser Jill Schlesinger in a CBS interview, you should not stop payroll deductions into your 401 (k) just because of a sudden drop in the market, rather now is the time to be putting more money into the fund. Russell Pearlman from SmartMoney magazine also says that investors shouldn’t pull all of their money out of the market and to not panic. She states, ?As bad as things look today, they are just going to be a blip on the radar 10, 20 years from now.? As hard as it is to watch the stocks fall more every day, advisers and market analysts are saying to stick with it and that what is happening now could be the worst of it.

Not all news is doom and gloom however. Some of the brighter side of it is oil has fallen from $147 a barrel to under $70 in 3 months. When things start to shake up Wall Street, it appears that investors will begin looking for something more stable than what they are currently invested in (which probably lead to yesterday?s record jump in the price of an ounce of gold). The fall in oil definitely eases some of the financial burden facing the average consumer in the U.S. The lower oil prices will help ease inflation on all the goods that we buy.

Hopefully Russell Pearlman is right and we will all look back on what is going on now and say it is a blip. We can also hope that the worst of it is over. However you look at what is happening on Wall Street, the biggest thing to do is wait.

Today the stocks of the lenders rose, some by as much as 13% in afternoon trading. However, a lot of the damage is already done. The government’s investment into the banks was to unfreeze the credit market so our economy can grow (people will be able to borrow money again and go back to spending.)

The debt the banks have incurred from bad mortgages and other personal debts has caused problems with lending that will last into next year or beyond.

I can honestly say I don’t know anyone with over $100,000 in the bank, but the measure is to ease worries about money in the bank. No one wants to lose the money they have in the bank…and I really don’t want to have to revert to stashing money under the mattress.

One thing I find odd about this is last week there was a report that the FDIC funds had dipped below minimum limits set by Congress, now they’re asking to up the insured amount. I’m not too sure about what would happen if an FDIC insured bank failed with several thousand accounts over $250,000. What exactly would happen to FDIC insurance if they ran out of money in this hypothetical situation?

With many professionals calling a bottom today, casual investors should now be investing for the long haul and not the quick rally. As always pigs get slaughtered and right now all the streets look red.

Around 11 am this morning, Bloomberg News broadcast the story as new… That’s when the madness happened. Between the time the story was broadcast as “new” and 12:30 pm, when trading was halted, the stock dropped from around $12 a share, to $3. Even when trading resumed, it still didn’t completely recover from the damage done by the false story.

The staff at the Sun-Sentinel online still don’t know what happened or why the story was posted on their website. I am thinking it was probably just an accident, after all, I’ve seen some pretty disorganized newsrooms. Fowl play would be a little more fun though, as far as reporting on the story goes.

This is good news for everyone because my entry yesterday talked about how oil may jump up to a new crazy expensive number if the hurricane was bad enough. Luckily, we all (except for the coastal Louisiana towns who were directly hit by Gustav) dodged a bullet on this one.

Anyway, oil fell to below $115 a barrel yesterday, hitting a 3 month low. Of course, when oil falls, recently anyway, stock have rallied.

With demand falling and supplies increasing, oil has been falling. It was down 7.9% in the last week. Some are saying it’s the end of the bullish commodities market, I think it’s just the end of the summer. Oil and gas are always more expensive through this time of the year.