FIGHT BACK : CHARGE BILLS LAND WITH A THUD AFTER THE LAST JINGLE BELL SOUNDS.

Byline: David Horowitz 

A FightBack.com user e-mailed me to say she is scared to think of her holiday gift credit-card bills after the first of the year. She told me she just finished paying off $3,800, and wrote, ``it was like releasing a plastic ball and chain from last year.''

About half of the 50 million families in this country have credit card balances that average $7,000. That's steep and tough on a family budget. For example, if you charge $1,000 to your card and make the minimum payment due each month, it would take 20 years to pay off the $1,000, and the interest alone would be more than $2,000. That's really scary and expensive.

I don't want to give a simplistic piece of advice like stop using your credit cards and scale back on gift giving, but that's an option to consider. Last year, I got a group of people together who were concerned about holiday spending and asked them to make up a realistic gift list and budget an amount for each person on that list.

Then, I told them right after the New Year to put away enough each week to save the balance for holiday spending. A waitress in Tucson, Ariz., stashed $1,725 out of her tips. A sanitary engineer from San Francisco is set to hit the stores with $2,100. They both told me it was not that difficult.

They just dropped change and a few dollars each day into a special place (the waitress in a shoebox, the maintenance man in a large, plastic mustard container.) Sure, they'll probably spend a little more shopping when an impulse drives them to buy, but in cash, which is now in a checking account, and not with a credit card that will come back later carrying a big balance waiting to be paid along with high interest.

Credit-card marketing

I learned that you can stop most credit card solicitations by notifying the three leading credit bureaus that you don't want them to release any credit card information from your credit file.

That's how the credit card company's cherry pick the names they use for their pre-approved credit card mailing lists and card solicitations - and that's big business. So far this year, 3 billion credit card offers have been mailed out.

Averaging it out, that's about 30 solicitations for every home in America. Six months ago, I sent a letter to each of the big three credit bureaus withdrawing any permission to allow these credit card companies to access my file for solicitation purposes.

It cost me nothing more than the time to use the same letter for each company and pay a small amount for a copy of my file. I am happy to say that my current credit reports show that last year 74 credit grantors viewed my personal information.

This year, that number has dropped to just three, and I haven't received a single solicitation in months. Here are the toll-free numbers of the three biggest credit reporting agencies:

Experian (Formerly TRW) [phone]

Equifax [phone]

Trans Union [phone]