For most of us, Christmas shopping equals credit card bills and the first statements are starting to show up right now. Now it’s time to deal with the financial fallout so you’re not paying for winter 2009 in winter 2019.

The Wall Street Journal online recently posted a great article on getting rid of holiday debt. A good suggestion is setting a goal to pay off holiday debt by March 31st. With all financial dealings you need to have a target and in this case it’s having the same credit card balances on March 31st that you did before you started holiday shopping.

The first thing to do is recognize that you splurged on credit shopping and you have to pay your penance. Put that credit card way, it’s been worn thin. Forgo eating out, $4 lattes and all of the other little sins that you commit so that you can save an extra few bucks a day. You should be able to make more than one payment each month on your credit card so that you aren’t tempted to spend the cash on luxuries.

Another key is to look at the money that Uncle Sam owes you, namely your tax refund. This is your credit card payoff money (not splurge on new flatscreen TV money) and you want to get it as soon as possible. If you do your own taxes, get your TurboTax software now, know which bank and income statements you need to wait for in the mail (or download them off of the web, even faster) and e-file with direct deposit to your checking account.

We all know that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure (thanks to Ben Franklin) so we should think about how we can avoid being in the same situation next year. One of the easiest ways to do that is to make holiday shopping a year-round activity. Hopefully your recipient list won’t change much, so keeping a cheat-sheet of gifts you will need in December will allow you to take advantage of off-season deals at any time and put these presents away until it’s Santa time.

Another approach is to keep a savings account just for holiday shopping. Contribute a bit every month, deplete it in time for gift-giving and then start contributing again in January. If you know how much you spent on gifts this year then you’ll have a good idea of what to budget for each month.

These Christmas savings funds take a lot of stress out of the holiday season as you won’t pile on any more debt next year.