Going into debt is such a tempting way to get what we want or supposedly solve our problems. Too often, it only leads to snowballing debt and interest.

Consider the state of New Jersey, which built the home of the NFL's New York Giants, the Meadowlands sports complex, in East Rutherford in the early 1970s. The Wall Street Journal reports:

Nearly 40 years ago the Garden State borrowed $302 million to begin constructing the Meadowlands. The goal was to pay off the bonds in 25 years. Although the project initially went according to plan, politicians couldn't resist continually refinancing the bonds, siphoning revenues from the complex into the state budget, and using the good credit rating of the New Jersey Sports and Exposition authority to borrow for other unsuccessful building schemes.

Today, the authority that runs the Meadowlands is in hock for $830 million, which it can't pay back. The state, facing its own cavernous budget deficits, has had to assume interest payments—about $100 million this year on bonds that still stretch for decades.