BOSTON (TheStreet) -- December is a crucial month for retailers, as sales for the holiday season comprise as much as a quarter of the year's revenue.

But what's good for business can be dangerous for consumers when all that largesse becomes a budget-buster.

"Everyone knows this is a make-or-break time for retailers, but it can be a make-or-break time for the consumer too," says Gail Cunningham, spokeswoman for the nonprofit National Foundation for Credit Counseling. "Poor choices during the holiday season can lead to deeper financial holes."

With unemployment in the double digits and many of us still feeling a post-recession hangover, saving money this holiday season is on everyone's mind. Surf the Internet and collect a slew of money-saving tips -- cut old Christmas cards in half and re-use the front cover to send holiday postcards; buy wine, decorative soap and olive oil in bulk from Costco or BJ's Wholesale Club; stock up on next year's necessities starting the week after Christmas to take advantage of 75% in savings the average Walgreens or CVS offer to clear out inventory.

But those sorts of tips pale in comparison to the big picture of proper budgeting.

A National Foundation for Credit Counseling poll of 3,800 respondents in October asked how people planned to pay for purchases this year. The majority of respondents, 68%, said they intend to use cash. Another survey by the foundation revealed that a third of Americans have no savings.

Weighing the two sets of results, the National Foundation for Credit Counseling concludes that Americans may be well-meaning, but they will likely revert to old habits and break out charge cards.

Consumers who charge $1,000 and pay 20% in interest over a year end up spending $1,200, for example.

In his new book "Scroogenomics: Why You Shouldn't Buy Presents for the Holidays" (Princeton University Press, 2009), Joel Waldfogel, an economics professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, lays out the case that much of holiday shopping, though high in sentimentality, offers little bang for the buck.

"What's distinctive about all of this spending is that, except for the prearranged gifts for teenagers, the choices are not made by the ultimate consumers," he writes. "As a result, the massive holiday spending has the potential to do a terrible job matching products with users. To make matters worse, we do much of this spending with credit, going into hock using money we don't yet have to buy things that recipients don't really want."

Even before he set out to write the book, he would regularly survey his students about the monetary value they place on gifts versus the actual cost paid. The discrepancy was, on average, 20% less than each dollar spent.

"When you multiply that by the volume of gift giving, you get to $13 billion a year in missing satisfaction," he says.

Waldfogel sees the increasing use of gift cards as bridging the gap between cost and satisfaction.

"Even though cash is considered a tacky gift, gift cards are not, and yet they are a lot like cash because they let the recipient choose what he or she wants," he says. "In that sense, they are pretty efficient."

The National Foundation for Credit Counseling tells consumers to plan out a list of who they want to shop for, determine how much they want to spend and comparison-shop before making a purchase.

Treat shopping like a "reconnaissance mission," the National Foundation for Credit Counseling's Cunningham says. "Get your gift and get out."

-- Reported by Joe Mont in Boston.