Filed under: Family Money, Personal Finance

Miranda Martinez has a pretty good handle on her finances these days.

The college professor and her husband bought a house in Brooklyn, N.Y., with a healthy cash down payment. Martinez takes regular trips to Italy to visit her in-laws without wracking up fat credit card balances.

But 15 years ago, it was a very different picture.

“When I was in graduate school, I was in a condition of perpetual debt,” Martinez says. “There was a period at one point when my lights got turned off. Which was…

Why We Buy: The Psychology of Overspending originally appeared on DailyFinance.com on 2012-02-01T14:25:00Z.

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