You planned ahead but still managed to overspend. This is a common theme among holiday shoppers and one that can wreak some serious havoc on your wallet. If you're dealing with post-holiday spending regret, consider the three tips listed below to get your spending under control and your debts paid off.

1. Keep the Credit Cards At Home

While you're digging yourself out of debt, it's best not to tempt yourself by keeping your charge cards readily available. To stop the excess spending before it starts, keep your credit cards at home.

When you use a credit card while you're trying to pay off your debts, it's like adding sand back in to a hole you just dug. It's best to give your cards a break while you pay down your current debt. Instead, if you need to make a purchase, remove the money from your checking account and pay with cash. It's a lot harder to part with cash than it is to swipe a card, and it's also easier to plan out your purchases ahead of time when you only bring the pre-planned amount of cash with you. This will limit your overspending and help you to pay down your debt sooner.

2. Make a Budget

It's a new year, so why not make a new budget? Budgeting is a great way to stay in control of your spending and will help you to pay off your credit card bills faster.

Whether you're working on paying off debt or not, a budget is a good thing to have. For financial stability and peace of mind, it's important to keeping a running list of all bills and their due dates – in a simplified way, that's all that a budget really is. Keeping a budget will also help you to pay off your credit cards faster, as you can add them into your monthly budget. Instead of paying the minimum amount on each card every month, add the credit card bills to your budget to see how much extra you can put towards them each month.

3. Come Up With a Plan

If you have one credit card, your plan may be as simple as paying the minimum balance plus whatever extra you can each month until it's paid off. The more credit cards you have to pay off, however, the more important having a plan becomes.

There are a number of methods you can use to pay off your debts. The method you choose will depend on your goals and your mindset. For example, while paying off high-interest debts first will save you more money in the long run, you may be more willing to stick with your payment plan by paying off the lower-amount debts first. Why? Because you get a mental boost for accomplishing a goal, which in turn will motivate you more to pay off the rest of your debts. All that matters is that the plan that you choose will result in you paying off all of your debts in a reasonable amount of time.

Don't suffer from the post-holiday spending blues. Get your finances under control by keeping your credit cards at home to avoid temptation, creating a budget to maximize your debt payments, and finding the debt payment plan that works for you. You can also make use of a personal checking account from a bank like FCN Bank to be sure you're not spending more money than you actually have.