It’s only October, but there is actually less than 82 shopping days remaining until Christmas. Many people are still paying their holiday debt from last year, let alone feel ready to start the holiday gift buying season all over again. Didn’t you make a promise to start your holiday shopping earlier this year, so you wouldn’t be as tempted to rely on credit cards at the last minute? Now would be a very good time to start planning for your holiday shopping. If you can work it into your budget for the next two and a half months, you may be able to avoid the dreaded after-holiday-credit-card-debt issue that the majority of American’s experience at the start of every new year.

If you’ve looked over your cash flow and bills however, only to find the disappointment of knowing you aren’t going to have a lot of additional cash to make your purchases with, at the very least- spend some time finding credit cards that are going to benefit you the most during your holiday shopping- and hurt you the least over the long term.

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People with bad credit histories are in a tough spot. Even if you’ve recently cleaned up your act, it can take a lot of time and work to get your credit score back to a workable place, and the process can get wearing fast—especially if you’re trying to get a small loan or mortgage. So if you have bad credit, and someone sends you a letter that says that they can have your credit score right as rain by the end of the week for just a small fee, you’ll probably sit up and pay attention.

Unfortunately, you’ll also probably be falling for a scam. Every day, companies send out fliers, letters and even make phone calls to people who are badly in debt, promising them that they can make their credit problems disappear. These companies offer different ways of doing this, some of which work, but only very temporarily (a day, at most), while others are just downright illegal. At the same time, they are taking money from people who need it the most.

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