Every December, countless people completely undo significant financial management improvements.  People who spend all year behaving responsibly with an eye to the future suddenly find themselves running up credit card debts and overspending on holiday-related purchases.

It’s easy to do.  Food.  Travel.  Gifts.  It adds up.  Holiday festivities are a societal norm and, for most of us, a family tradition.  Our old holiday spending habits are very tough to break.  For many of us, though, the usual spending spree cuts against everything we’re trying to accomplish with respect to our personal finances.

Are you going to let Christmas unravel months of progress?  Are you going to emerge from the holiday season with a stocking full of bills?  Or, is this going to mark the year in which you found your financial discipline and mental toughness led you to a happy holiday without forcing you to be a Grinch?

Hopefully, you can have a very merry Christmas and an equally happy New Year as the January bills start hitting the mailboxes.  Keep the holidays inexpensive isn’t easy, but it is possible.  Here are a handful of tips to help you avoid cost overruns while those silver bells are ringing.

Make a budget.  Keep a budget. You can’t approach holiday spending with a “we’ll see what happens” attitude.  There are too many great gifts for all of your friends and family.  You love those people, but they don’t want you to spend yourself into oblivion for their sake.  You and they both understand that you have to draw a line with respect to spending.  Look at your finances, determine your budget and stick with it.  Period.

SavingStuff has some interesting ideas on how to come up with a holiday budget that will help everyone in your celebratory circle.  You can jointly agree to spending limits or do the “everyone pulls a name out of the hat and buys one gift” trick.  These are great systems if the others in your gift-giving cadre are willing to participate because they decrease that “I should give more and more and more” guilt factor substantially.

Pay Cash. The Family Wallet makes a great suggestion to help keep you within your budget–pay cash.  You can’t overspend when all you have available is the roll of greenbacks in your pocket.  Leave the credit cards and debit cards in a box wrapped up under your tree and hit the shopping scene with nothing but cash.

Rethink the Holidays. RL Coffield at Suite101 puts it nicely:  “Any kind of outing that you do as a family will be remembered by your children as a special occasion. Most people’s fondest memories of Christmas are not about the gifts they received, but about the time they spent with dad or mom or close family members doing something together.”  In other words, you need to remind yourself that it isn’t all about the gifts.  It’s about spending time with those we love and sharing something more valuable than the latest toy or gizmo–our time.  Reconsider where you’re placing your emphasis and the savings may very well follow in your jolly tracks.

Shop Like a Genius. Compare prices.  Look for bargains.  Take advantage of special offers and rebates.  Be a smart consumer.  Impulsive shopping and last-minute decision making derail more holiday budgets than Santa has elves.  Keep your wits about you.  Shopping online can be a great way to save some money.  You can often find great deals and many companies will even offer free shipping during the holiday season.  Others find great bargains by using eBay instead of running to their local retailer.  Folks like the guy at Ecourban have found ways to make Craigslist cut their holiday expenses down to size.

Start Thinking about Next Year. If you had planned for a holiday spending spike a year ago, you wouldn’t be worrying about whether or not you’ll be able to play Santa Claus effectively right now.  Instead, you’d already have the necessary amount of money set aside and the whole process of purchasing presents would be more fun and a lot less stressful.

As you move through the next few months, track your holiday-related spending closely.  After everyone sings Auld Lang Syne and you recover from any New Year’s Eve festivities, take a look at those numbers.  You can use them both to improve your approach and to help you set up a plan for saving next year’s holiday money before November hits.