It isn't only the high street stores which are desperate to get your business by tempting you with bargains, the credit card companies are out to tempt you for your business too.

They are hungrily seeking out those with clean credit records and are willing to offer plenty of interest-free credit and even cashback deals.

So if you play your cards right, you're bargain hunting and Christmas shopping could end up making you money.

However, you must stick to the rules :-

1) Only spend what you can afford to spend and what you can easily afford to pay back once the interest free period is over.

2) Make sure you make the repayments ontime each month - miss one and your interest free deal will be taken away!

3) Never buy anything on a credit card that you have done a balance transfer on - You may find that the repayments go towards the balance transfer and that purchases are charged interest on. Also, one part of the deal may run out before the other and again you may end up paying interest on it.

4) Never use a credit card to to withdraw cash from a cash machine as you will be charged interest immediately. This is particularly important when abroad, as not only will you be charged interest, you will incurr commission charges and probably an overseas useage charge. These charges can add up to about 5% of what you withdraw before the interest gets piled on.

5) Halifax All in One MasterCard and Marks & Spencer Money MasterCard charge no interest for ten months on purchases. The great thing about the M&S card is that you will also collect points for your shopping - earning one point for every £1 spent at M&S and one point for every £2 spent elsewhere. For every 100 points you will earn a £1 reward voucher, which you can use to pay for goods in store.

6) If you are one of the lucky people able to pay off the balance in full each month, then you can really take advantage of a cashback card. Amex currently offer a deal where you can get a 5% cashback up to £4,000 for the first 3 months, which then reverts to a cashback of between 0.5% increasing to 1.5% once you have spent over a certain amount - around £3,000 in the year.

If you have a current account type mortgage where you save interest by keeping as much money in your account as possible, this is also a great way to cut down on the interest you will pay over the duration of your mortage. Buy everything on the card each month, earning 1.5% cashback on everything you spend (after the initial 5% intro offer) and pay back the whole amount just before you get paid again, preferably by direct debit so you don't forget. This keeps the maximum amount of money in your current account which is then offset against your mortgage. Doing this month in month out can quite literally save hundreds of pounds, if not thousands, over the term of a mortage, as the interest you save comes of the capital balance of the mortgage. This means that after month 1, when you make your mortgage repayment, you are actually paying more than you need to and the overpayment reduces the capital balance even more. It is compound interest working in reverse and in your favour!

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If you have a large balance on your credit cards, and you are being charged interest on them you should really look at the interest you are being charged. Most card companies are charging in excess of 16% APR and it could be as high as 29%. (Unless you take tha Argos 'Easy Shop' card which carries an APR of around 227%!) Also, if you are only making the minimum repayment, have a look at how much is going towards reducing the debt. You will find it is peanuts which means that you will probably never clear the debt. It would be much better for you to get one of the many debt consolidation loans that are available at much lower interest rates than credit cards. When you sit down and work it out, you will probably end up saving hundreds of pounds in interest, put a finite time on the time taken to clear your debts, and get control of your finances back.