Is it wise to buy your Holiday purchases? If you are like most Americans, then it is not such a great idea. Most Americans purchase their gifts on their credit cards and then make minimum payments all the year long. This means that not only did you pay the price for the item that you bought, you are still paying the interest that you are being charged on those purchases.

In fact, you may be paying for many holidays past if you have charged your holiday purchases. The secret is to plan ahead and pay off your holiday charges immediately. By doing that you have not forced yourself into paying much more than the item was worth.

But the secret is to start your holiday shopping early. If you have ideas for things that you want to buy, then you can basically shop all year for those items. Then you can get them on sale and save even more money. For example, you want to buy a television for one of your children. Many companies put their televisions on sale late in the summer prior to football season. By watching those ads, you can get a pretty good deal on the item you want. Then by paying off the bill immediately, or even over a couple of months, you save quite a bit of money on interest.

There are people that start buying their holiday gifts year round so that they can balance out their budget and keep from overloading their credit cards at the end of the year.

Another way to handle it would be to put money away each month specifically for your holiday purchases. This does not mean that you take away from your savings account or emergency fund but you put money away just for your holiday spending. Then when it comes time to make your purchases, you take the money you saved and apply that to the list of people you want to buy for. The biggest issue is to stay within your budget so that you don’t overspend and use your credit cards for purchases.

If you plan your budget to include holiday spending, then you can plan for those purchases without using your credit cards. This not only keeps you in budget but saves you money over the long haul. Keep in mind that you should be reducing your debt and limiting the use of your credit cards. Good credit is so critical with today’s economy. Looking for a good job, trying to buy a home or a car is just simply impossible without good credit. Don’t let your credit score slip because you want to put your holiday purchases on your credit cards.

A sign that you might have some credit problems is a stack of unopened mail. When the mail comes in do you take the time to look through the mail and put your bills unopened somewhere? When you don’t pay attention to the bills it usually indicates that you don’t want to deal with them. This is where problems in your finances come about and will lead you to bad credit.

Many times people will see that they got a bill from their credit card company and will just put it down. It may be too depressing to pay attention to at the time so they don’t even open it. This is dangerous for several reasons. You should be reviewing each statement to make sure that there are not any unauthorized charges. Identity Theft is up each year and if you don’t review your statements, you could become a victim without any clue. This is not something that you want to have happen to you. I have known people who were victims but did not find out for several months and it took years to get the problems cleared up. There are time limits in place with most credit card companies to dispute any charges and if you don’t dispute them quick enough, you may have to just pay the charges.

You may also not want to open up the bills because you know that you charged more than you should have. This may cause you to not find out about due date changes or other changes that your credit card company is applying to your account. When those changes come about and you are not aware of them, they could lower your limit and you could get hit with over the limit charges or other fees. When you don’t pay attention to the changes you could get your account closed and negative reporting done to your credit history.

Ignoring your bills will hurt your credit because you will end up paying some bills late or missing payments altogether. Since late payments are 35% of your credit score, they will really hurt your credit score.

Opening up your mail and reviewing each and every charge on the statement is the best thing that you can do. If you don’t pay the bill immediately, take the time to review it carefully, then schedule it for payment. Making each and every payment due on time will keep you credit score going up. Even if you have to make a minimum payment it will still help your score. Reducing your debt is really important and it should be kept below 30% of your credit limit. Those two things will help your credit score.

Having good credit is so important that you can’t let down on anything that might hurt that score. You should be more concerned about your score then being worried about your bills. Take the time to protect yourself and put in the time for a good credit score.