The prospect of dealing with their Christmas debt hangover can be a bitter pill to swallow for many of us who have splurged over the festive season – but there are some simple steps you can take to lessen the pain. This is not helped by the fact that many of us are still paying back borrowed money from Christmas 2006, figures released just before the holidays reveal.

A national survey by price comparison website MoneyExpert.com found that one tenth of adults – the equivalent of 4.4m people – are still in the red from over 12 months ago.

It calculates that someone carrying a balance of £1,000 from last Christmas will have spent about £169 in interest over the year if their rate was 16.9%.

The Citizens Advice Bureau (CAB) is inundated with calls from the public looking for advice on how to deal with their Christmas excesses every year; last year, people mainly needed advice on loans and hire purchases, catalogue and mail order debts, credit card debts and overdrafts as well as information on bankruptcy.

This year it has teamed up with Barclaycard to issue 10 tips to try and get on top of your newly acquired New Year debt.

These mainly deal with pre-empting large festive bills however before they rack up, but nonetheless contain useful advice.

Don't take on too much debt to begin with

As the New Year sales kick off, CAD advises the public to stick to their budget. Include everyday household bills in this budget as they are sometimes overlooked. Do not bank on an overdraft, it can turn out being expensive.

Also, pay for your goods outright if you can without relying on credit. Obviously shop around for bargains when making purchases and also shop around for the best credit rate as some cards can differ greatly. Do not borrow from unfamiliar lenders and always read the small print when signing a credit agreement.

At least make your minimum payments

One piece of information CAB offers that relates directly to dealing with your debt once it has accumulated is to always make paying your minimum payments a priority. Miss this and it can be the beginning of a downward spiral as it will incur additional charges.

However planning to only pay the minimum payment on your debts is not a good idea either: it will only take longer to get free of your debts, especially since the summer's credit crunch as lenders have started to raise their rates and limit their borrowing.

This is especially true in the case of storecards – they tend to have prohibitively high rates, which can take years to pay off if only clearing the minimum payment. Research by price comparison and switching service uSwitch has found that the average APR on a store card is 26%; that's approximately 10% higher than the average credit card rate.

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