Christmas Bills on Your Credit CardsChristmas is at the back of the pack already. America on the threshold of the biggest national holiday has plunged into this cozy, warm but a bit hysterical atmosphere of the festival. Belated customers are racing through stores and malls in the search of Christmas gifts dead on their feet. Holiday shopping season is in full swing. Credit card accounts, beware! If you do not want to keep paying off your debts accrued during this holiday season till next Christmas, you are to stay in sober mind and follow a number of simple rules while big Christmas shopping. Of course, everybody works out his or her own scheme of gifts-buying process and tries to stick to it. But I have made an attempt to give a kind of generalized idea of how to save your funds from dying out on holidays. So, here it is. Step 1. Reminder. Somewhere in the middle of summer put a mark on your calendar, write a note, or set an alarm for a memo with the following content. I swear that this year I will take care of all presents and preparations for Christmas beforehand, at least at the very beginning of December. Step 2. Make a Christmas list. Post on it everything you need to do before the celebration. And a separate list of people that you need to buy gifts for. Count all your friends, family members, colleagues, room-mates, fellow students, girlfriends, boyfriends... Then think of hiring a contract killer. Kidding! Step 3. Plan out your budget. Split your expenses among those people on the list. It will be just perfect if you find out what your close people want to get for X-mas. Then you know the exact amount of money you are to spend. Step 4. Get a Christmas credit card. You'd better not use one of your regular plastics for holiday shopping. Apply for a credit card with incentives. Cash back card will be a great alternative for you. You make a lot of purchases and then get a part of your money spent back. Another option you have is getting a credit card deal with no annual fee and 0% introductory APR. Such a card will save you a considerable amount of money. Step 5. Shopping for gifts. After all the preliminaries you can hit the shopping malls. Do not try to empty all shelves in malls in your attempts to get presents for everybody. Having given way to impulse buying, you risk getting things that were not on your list and that neither you nor anybody else from your surrounding need. Be very careful when paying for your purchases with a credit card. Holiday season is the time of crime rate rise. So, credit card fraudsters are ready to attack your credit card number as soon as you get off your guard. Take your plastic out of your wallet right in front of the cashier and after you pay, make sure you put your card back. And keep the receipts. Just in case... If you keep on ice all Christmas hustle and bustle, you are either to stay out of all holiday fuss, celebration, and gifts, or you are almost bound to get into big debts. So, do not let financial problems overshadow this blessed holiday. Anyway, what you will keep in your heart is a great time you have spent with your close people, not gifts and budget planning. Merry Christmas!
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