I know it's early but...

the time has come to talk about holiday shopping. Wait! Don't stop reading! I know we're all disgusted by the Christmas decorations set out in stores way before we even have our Halloween costumes picked yet, but hear me out. If you don't plan ahead, you won't be able to afford all the presents you want to buy, you'll find yourself bargain-shopping at the mall on Christmas eve instead of enjoying yourself, and/or (probably yes) you'll have a massive amount of credit card debt waiting for you in January. So be proactive and get a game plan going now if you don't already have one. Here are some great ways to save money so you can enjoy yourself more and get your credit card to stop smoking.

Start cutting back on small unnecessary expenses and put them into a Secondary Savings account. You can open one with just $5. Then you add to it ($5 deposit instead of Starbucks, watch a streaming movie on Netflix, deposit $15, etc) and when you're ready, just take the money out and pay for your purchases in cash.

I have a big extended family. So to save money and some stress in trying to find the perfect gift for everyone, we have a gift exchange every year. Everyone buys one gift (and yes there's a price limit) and then we put all the wrapped presents in a pile and everyone gets one. It's more fun to shop and more fun to open.

With friends, sometimes it can be hard to give presents to everyone. With some of my closest friends we have a "date" instead of giving presents. Last year my best friend and I went to see Wicked together. We "gave" it to each other as a gift, but it didn't necessarily have to be bought until a few weeks later.

And my last piece of advice is to start buying your presents early! Spread them out a little bit, that way it won't hurt as much to buy them all at once. Make a list and buy one present every paycheck and you'll get a bunch done before the holiday season gets into full swing!