Before Rebecca Bloomwood hit the big screen and startled audiences with frivolous spending in Confessions of a Shopaholic, she was the main character in the Shopaholic book series by author Sophie Kinsella. With out-of-control spending and an inability to stay on top of her credit card debt and finances, Rebecca is a financier’s worst nightmare.
Who is Rebecca Bloomwood?
Rebecca Bloomwood is the main character in Sophie Kinsella’s Confessions of a Shopaholic series and recent film. The Successful Saving magazine writer lets a flat in London, and can’t seem to stay on top of her shopping habit. The deeper in debt Bloomwood falls and the more trouble she finds herself in financially, the more she appears to spend, unable to curb her frivolous spending habits. Both the books and the movie focus on how Rebecca can handle her creditors — while still shopping and falling in love, of course.
How did Rebecca’s spending get so out of control?
In both the books and the movie, you quickly see that Rebecca has an obsession with shopping—name brands, especially when they’re on sale, popular and trendy stores, and staying fresh and in style. Even with a reasonable salary writing at Successful Saving (a typical London magazine writer’s salary would be approximately $20,000 to $26,000 British pounds; a writer in New York City would earn between $40,000 and $60,000, depending on the publication), Rebecca would have been in a tight spot simply paying for rent, food and utilities, even without the excess spending.
Dealing with Addiction
With out-of-control spending and only a moderate salary, Rebecca’s precarious financial situation is all too common in today’s economy. Once she get’s control of her spending, Rebecca would benefit from consolidating credit card debt to balance transfer credit cards. And if there’s no happy ending, a debt snowball is her best bet.
Is Rebecca’s financial chaos in Confessions of a Shopaholic realistic?
Kinsella does a good job of interjecting bits of seriousness into her account of Rebecca’s antics, with letters from creditors and banks regularly filling Rebecca’s mailbox. While Rebecca’s fall into debt is very realistic, one has to wonder how long she’d be able to keep up her spending before a collection agency became involved. The movie notes that Rebecca has maxed out 14 credit cards at one point—add to that her regular bills and rent, and a credit consolidation agency or collection agency’s involvement is almost a certainty in the real world.
If you call yourself a shopaholic, it’s an almost certainty that you could take lessons from Confessions of a Shopaholic’s Rebecca Bloomwood.
