A Day with the Credit Card of the 'Real Life' Carrie Bradshaw

The Sex and the City (TWC) ladies’ spending habits are apparently not tied to the potential recession. Endless rounds of $12 Cosmos! Constant taxi taking! Those $550 shoes! It may be fun to watch, but is this lifestyle realistic for actual city-dwelling working girls?

For answers, MainStreet first turned to Brazen Careerist blogger Penelope Trunk. “In a lot of ways, [the women on Sex and the City] live the life a tourist lives. [And] the tourist has no sense of how New Yorkers live,” she says. “Most people who can afford to go out for drinks every night can’t because they’re working.”

So how do single New York ladies live? MainStreet asked a 'real-life' Carrie Bradshaw, journalist Leonora Epstein, a Cosmopolitan magazine staffer and girl-about-town, to reconstruct a hypothetical Friday for us, last minute shopping trips and all. The "Making of a Cosmo Girl" blogger tells MainStreet that between her social life and her job, she considers herself to be leading “a bit of a charmed life” – and she does it all on about $35,000 a year.

We’re not sure we believe her, but Leonora swears she pays her credit card bills herself. (Unlike the notoriously web-befuddled Carrie Bradshaw, Leonora pays her bills online). “I never open my credit card statement,” she says, admitting, “I really don’t pay attention to my finances.” Well we did. Here's what we found out:

MORNING ROUTINE
Real Life: Leonora wakes up, walks to gym, takes a yoga class ($25), buys a latte at Starbucks (SBUX) ($4) and takes the subway ($2) to the Cosmopolitan magazine offices. TOTAL: $31
Carrie's World: The New York Star sex columnist worked from home and we imagine she’s a fancy-schmancy Dean & DeLuca kind of girl who may have picked up a latte ($4) in a moment of writer’s blog, and who can't be bothered to get the New York Post (NWS), and its indispensible Page Six, (50 cents) home-delivered. TOTAL: $4.50

NO SUCH THING AS A FREE LUNCH
Real Life: Cosmo’s blogger usually eats lunch in the Hearst cafeteria ($12) and often takes an afternoon trip to the Duane Reade drug store for some shampoo, foundation, or makeup sponges ($5). TOTAL: $17
Carrie's World: Carrie would have cabbed it ($25 both ways) downtown to lunch with Stanford Blatch at Pastis, enjoying moules frites ($18) and a glass of vino ($10). TOTAL : $78

POWER SHOP
Real Life: “A lot of the time on Friday night, I feel like I don’t have anything to wear, so I might buy an outfit,” says Leonora. Sometimes she heads to Forever 21 for something inexpensive, but other nights she’ll splurge on an Intermix top ($150). TOTAL: $150
Carrie's World: Carrie understands that nothing-to-wear-feeling and would’ve invested in a new pair of Jimmy Choos ($550). TOTAL: $550

THE PRICE OF NIGHT LIFE
Real Life: She cabs it ($13) from her apartment in Gramercy to dinner on the Lower East Side “because I’m probably wearing high heels,” Leonora says. At the Little Giant restaurant, she’ll start with “a really girl cocktail and then wine with dinner,” ($40) and hits the bar Sweet & Vicious afterwards, knocking back a couple margaritas ($30). “I try to get guys to buy them for me, but it depends on the evening and how I’m feeling,” she says. Then she cabs it home again ($13). TOTAL: $96
Carrie's World: On the show Carrie says she favors “drinks, dinner and dancing – very old New York.” Tottering in a pair of heels, she’ll have hopped a cab ($20 both ways) to Balthazar in SoHo. She’ll have downed two glasses of Vouvray ($14 each) with her friends to loosen herself up for a date with Big at Mercer Kitchen – which we’ll assume he covered for her and then gave her a ride home in his Town Car. TOTAL: $68

GRAND TOTALS FOR A TYPICAL FRIDAY:
In real life: $294
In Carrie's World: $783.50

The moral of the study? Sure Epstein spends less than Carrie, but considering that a year's worth of Epstein's Fridays would take up about 40% of her pre-tax salary (and we haven't even factored in the bill for weekend brunches), MainStreet advises all Sex and the City fans: Until you find your Mr. Big, keep a careful watch on your budget.

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