The holiday season is upon us and while there will be plenty of time for joy and spending time with family, there is serious business to be taken care of; buying gifts.

What has become a contest of who gives a better gift or how to spend more on an individual than last year, definitely tends to wear you’re your mind and budget thin.

But you do not have to battle on the brink of bankruptcy every holiday season.

Suze Orman provides a few necessary tips to ensure you do not go beyond your financial comfort level this holiday season, in her article, “ Five Ways to Avoid Holiday Overspending,” which was posted November 20, 2006 on Yahoo! Finance.

“I'm talking about the five weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas, when 20 percent of our country's annual retail spending occurs. Jamming one-fifth of our spending into a frenzied window of shopping time can lead to some ugly financial results: A whole lot of bills we have no way of paying off come January.”

You will be able to enjoy this holiday season better if you learn how to avoid the number one financial scam: ripping yourself off. According to Orman, there are five easy ways to accomplish this.

The first thing you should do when paying for gifts with a credit card you do not intend to immediately pay off come January, is double the purchase price. This will show you how much money you will eventually be spending or wasting on a particular item.

“If you run up a $1,000 balance this holiday season -- and that's close to the forecast of average individual spending -- and you intend to pay it off slowly each month by making minimum payments, your interest charges will total around $1,000 if your card has an 18 percent rate.”

Next, you will want to establish a stone cold budget before you even step in a store. Create a detailed list of everyone you must purchase gifts for this year and then determine overall how much you can spend.

Purchase what or how much you intended to on each individual and move on with no exceptions. “Don't skip the ‘who’ part; we've all been stuck with more presents for someone than we anticipated simply because we forgot about the one we bought last week or last month. Keep track.”

And keep this list with you at all times because you never know when something pops up and you think “Hey, he could use that.” But not if he’s already been crossed off the list.

Thirdly, you should decline all store credit card offers. You know you are tempted to save 10 percent when you have been standing in line for 10 minutes to purchase more items than you intended. Save 10 percent? Sure, it can’t hurt, right?

“First, it seems to be human nature that you'll use that 10 percent discount as an excuse to buy more. You figure you're saving 10 percent, so why not pick up a few more things? Here's why: Because you'll end up spending more than you intended when you first stepped up to the cash register.”

The forth holiday saving tip is to be diligent with your gift card use. It is too often that when we receive a $100 gift card to say, an electronics store, we end up using it for a $400 video game console. So instead of receiving $100 this holiday, you just spent an extra $300. If you needed that additional $100 on a gift that cost $400 and couldn’t afford it otherwise, then the item is not within your budget to begin with.

And the last and obvious, yet most important money saving tip of the holiday season is that you cannot buy friends or love.

“An important relationship is not defined by what you spend on a holiday gift. So often, people tell me they feel pressure to shower their friends and family with holiday gifts even though they can't really afford it.”

That pressure you feel is often self-inflicted and you should give yourself a gift; the gift of less debt. It’s cliché but true, that no one is going to love you less because you bought a $50 gift instead of a $100 one.