The shopping bug is displacing good financial sense among women who mire themselves in debt in order to shop, the switching site warned, as shopaholics accumulate a personal average shopping debt of £8,092.

Moreover, 72 per cent of them admit to using credit cards, store cards, loans and overdrafts to fund their profligate spending, with many concentrated in Birmingham and Glasgow.

Although the relatively small shopaholic segment of society grabs the headlines, the spending habits of all British women are cause for concern, the study claims, pointing to a collective debt of over £20 billion in unsecured borrowing and a compulsion to shop 2.4 times per month.

Covert spending leads almost half of British women to buy clothes on their partner’s credit card in secret, it claims.

“Women are becoming more interested in ‘size zero’ than zero per cent APR,” Ann Robinson, uSwitch.com’s director of consumer policy, commented.

To learn more about zero per cent credit cards, click here.

© Adfero Ltd