Confessions of a Shopaholic
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The Story
Young, vivacious journalist Rebecca Bloom (Isla Fisher) has maxed out a dozen credit cards in support of her high-fashion shopping habit. To the dismay of her supportive roommate Suze (Krysten Ritter), Rebecca shops compulsively on while ducking collection agents and looking for work.
Instead of landing her dream job as a writer for her favorite national fashion magazine, Rebecca stumbles into a position with “Successful Saver,” a financial magazine about making good financial choices. While falling in love with her editor Luke (Hugh Dancy), Rebecca’s everywoman column becomes an unlikely hit, making it harder and harder for her to keep the secret that she has never kept her own advice and is drowning in a sea of debt.
Content Issues
Swearing includes several uses of God’s name. Rebecca and her roommate also live with the roommate’s boyfriend. Rebecca shows quite a bit of cleavage. Rebecca and Suze get drunk together. And the prices Rebecca pays for her clothes are obscene and disturbing, especially if you’re the parent of a fashion-minded teenage girl.
Worldview Talking Points
“Confessions of a Shopaholic” may be an average romantic comedy brightened by the Lucille Ball stylings of Isla Fisher, but it is built around some refreshing worldview ideas:
Spending money you don’t have on things you don’t need will eventually catch up to you. Shopping and spending can become a powerful addiction for those momentarily buzzed by the thrill of the purchase then emptied upon leaving the store. Painful consequences follow unwise financial choices.
It’s always the right time to look for opportunities to talk with your child about being wise with money. Our consumerist society sets financial traps for all of us, but teens and college students can be the most vulnerable—and the most easily spared by some preventative wisdom.
Sometimes parents are hesitant to talk to kids about money because of the mistakes we ourselves have made and may still be working through. But that’s all the more reason to start pointing our students to God’s wisdom about finances.
If you’re looking for a resource for your kids, Mark Matlock’s Wisdom On . . . Time and Money is a great little book. Offer to read it with your student, and if he or she sees this film look for a chance to ask some of these talking points questions:
- Did you think “Confessions of a Shopaholic” was funny? Do you like Isla Fisher? What else have you seen her in?
- Is there anything that could have made the movie better?
- Would you describe any of your friends as compulsive shoppers? Why do you think some people have trouble with spending more money than they should?
- How does our culture set people up to fail in the area of spending?
- What do you think is the right age for someone to start using a credit card? What are the dangers of using credit cards?
- Do you have any kind of a plan for how you spend money? Do you think you need one?
- Do you think there’s anything wrong with spending money to get something you like if you actually have the money? When does spending cross the line from being wise to being foolish?
- In the movie, could Rebecca’s parents have done anything differently to help her learn to be wise with money? What do you think I could do to help you do better with money?
- What is the opposite of being wise with money?
- Is there any area of your life that could be moving towards becoming addictive or compulsive? What other kinds of things do some of your friends seem to have trouble stopping?
- How can your relationship with God help you to be wise with money? Can He help you to overcome other forms of addictive behavior?
- How would you describe the characteristic of the fruit of the Spirit (from Galatians 5:22-23) of self-control?
[Note: Sharing your own hard-learned lessons about money and debt is a great way to help your child begin to take this issue seriously.]
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