Tax Refund Splurge for Many Americans Is Paying Down Debt

There are plenty of things Astrid Bouverie could have bought with her $13,000 tax refund this spring. Toys for her three kids. Beauty products for herself. Maybe a vacation.

Instead, she used most of it — $10,000 — to pay down debt: a mix of car payments, credit card balances and a loan she took out to buy new windows for her Miami home. The rest went into an emergency savings fund. She has no regrets.

“It made a huge dent in my debt,” said Bouverie, 36, a post-partum nurse. “If I had changed my withholdings last year, I wouldn’t have had this chunk of ...