His two jobs were no longer enough for him. Addicted to shopping, Clara unexpectedly fell into the spiral of split payment. “I don’t know how, but at one point, automatically, I was making all my payments in four installments.” She testifies.
Originally intended to make our lives easier, they turn into a downward spiral when we don’t know how to use them properly. Payments in installments, also called “credits”, have ruined Clara’s life in recent months. Exclusively for the Women’s Journalshe confides.
At 26, Clara (@claralighter00 on TikTok) is what we call a shopaholic. For her, “impossible to go shopping without leaving with something” Next. She admitted to spending at least “an hour a day watching, making baskets, comparing” products on e-shops. At other times it may transition to “two, three hours easily.”
A harmless passion that pushed her into difficult financial situations. In 2026, the Breton woman has accumulated nearly 17 split payments at the same time, or more than €500 per month. His addiction to shopping then turned into an addiction to split payment; so much so that she lost her way to the stores: “In the end, it bothered me to go shopping because I knew I wouldn’t be able to pay in installments.” Today, beyond €50, she pays everything in 4 installments.
However, his first split payment was not so engaging in terms of amount: “It was clothes on SheIn for the holidays. I didn’t have the money at the time. It must have been €100 or €120, something like that.” But from one-off repairs to a vital reflex, there is only one step.
While we would tend to think that a small amount is nothing serious, this is precisely where the perverse side of paying in installments lies. “Every time I made a new one, I said to myself, it doesn’t matter, it’s only €20 every month. Except that in fact, cumulatively, it’s €500 in the end.” Paradoxically, Clara only uses split payment for amounts that seem insignificant. “I once had to pay for IKEA sheets in installments.”
According to her, it is the fact that credit is accessible in such low amounts which encourages this vicious circle. Even marketing experts, who are well-versed in the techniques, fall into the trap. Digital project manager, Clara knows what she is talking about: “We are the ones who implement these marketing techniques. We know but we’re going for it anyway.”
She stopped everything a month ago. The trigger? “I have an Excel table where I write down all my monthly expenses. I was doing my accounts and in fact I had forgotten to enter them. I recalculated everything. There were 17 of them. Usually, I was making around 5 to 7 payments at the same time (…) I said to myself, ‘Stop.’ I took €500 aside and completed 14 out of 17.”
However, she does not demonize this type of payment: “It still helps. But you have to do it for basic necessities like moving in. Not for fashion.” The one who already has “tried everything” – Alma, Klarna, Scalapay – appreciate that there is a lot of“obstacles” before validation. “On some platforms, it’s long. There are more pages that open. You have to enter your phone number, a code.” Enough to allow the consumer to think twice before taking the plunge.
