Living abroad tips and hints for money savers

carrots

Some recent prices from my local supermarket, Shopi.

€
Filter coffee 250g 2.24
Corn flakes 375g 1.49
Jordan's Country Crisp 500g 3.04
2 big Royal Gala apples 500g 0.80
Carte Noire instant coffee 100g 4.51
Burgundy Vin Ordinaire 3.51
Baguette 0.72
Semi-skimmed milk 1 litre 1.12
Button mushrooms 250g 0.99
Smoked streaky bacon 300g 1.71

There is a bigger, cheaper supermarket, Champion, 6 km away. They have chicken thighs for €6 a kilo.

I wonder how these prices compare with the UK - and what exchange rate one would use!

EdInvestor

carrots wrote: »

I wonder how these prices compare with the UK - and what exchange rate one would use!

Easy to check: www.tesco.com
and https://www.xe.com

droopsnout

Or www.mysupermarket.com and compare all the big boys in the UK.

seven-day-weekend

I would no way pay nearly a fiver for coffee!:eek:

Although I think that that is the price for decent coffee anywhere - I'll just do without coffee!!

And we get really drinkable red wine for 99 centimos. In fact my husband and a young friend of his have a contest to see who can get the cheapest, drinkable wine! (we are winning so far with a denominacion de origen (branded wine) for 89 centimos from Lidl!).

We always take loads of it to the UK when we go so we don't have to buy any while we are there (stay for several weeks).

droopsnout

In our area, Champion is one of the dearer shops. Intermarche (and its group) is much cheaper. Champion, being a smaller part of the Carrefour group, is dearer than most, as is another Carrefour offshoot, 8 à Huit. Shopi is also part of the Carrefour group.

Cheapest in France are Intermarche, Lidl, Aldi, Leader Price, and possibly some of the other "hard discounters" (like Ed) that we don't have in our immediate area.

For more info on the Carrefour group, go to www.carrefour.com, and, on the left, click on "Other group sites".

I used to like the Pryca supermarkets in Spain, but they've gone to Carrefour, too, IIRC.

donny-gal

Kenco are now doing instant coffee in packets to refill your jars, and I brought these out this time, Tesco had them on offer at £3 for 200g.

DG

seven-day-weekend

Droopsnout, last time we drove through France, I kept seeing road signs saying Carrefour. I thought there were so many of them it couldn't possibly be referring to the Supermarket.

When we got back I asked our French friend Pascal what it meant - he told me it meant crossroads!

Oh well, now I know!

droopsnout

And is also used for roundabout, sometimes.

Don't know what weights you're talking about, d-g, but Asda are currently doing the Nescafe specialty coffees (Espresso, Alta Rica, Le Parisien, Cap Colombie, etc) at "Any 2 for £5" - in a jar. Each jar is 100g. This is MUCH cheaper than Tesco and Sainsbury. They are charging, for 200g, more than twice the 100g price, at around £5.76.

Savvy_Sue

I've seen quite a few of the UK supermarkets doing lots of X for £1 offers lately, in an effort to kid us that prices aren't going up. The offers change week by week.

And as for bread, well, it's just :eek: Very difficult to get a decent sliced loaf for less than £1, unless there's an offer on. And although I've got a breadmaker, I've never found it very economical because one loaf goes just-like-that. I suppose I should give it another go now there's only 3 of us at home. My results were a bit hit and miss, even though it's a Panasonic. It does help if you put the paddle on, of course.

Interested to hear what was said about Lanzarote as we are off to Fuerteventura in March, we found that booking half board was cheaper than going just b&b so that's what we're doing!

gfplux, if you hadn't mentioned your difficulties with spelling, I would never have known, so please don't feel intimidated by any of us, I'm not going to say your grammar appears perfect in case DS has spotted something wrong (although I'm sure he'd be far too much of a gentleman to point it out) but your posts always appear to be perfectly comprehensible and sensible to me.

seven-day-weekend

Just to say the couple I referred to earlier who were going back to the UK because they had come here totally unprepared and their business never got off the ground, now find they can't go when they wanted because they have to wait until six months after the dog's rabies jab.

Now whilst I feel sorry for them, (the woman especially is quite distressed about it) why didn't they know this? I know it and I haven't even got a dog, or any other animal!

I think some people just don't have any common sense.

Having said that it's a horrible badly-trained dog, if it was mine I'd try and rehome it!