Which are the cheapest supermarkets?

[Llantony]

"Sell you quality family car and buy a basic Hyundi then spend the difference on some better quality food."

Are Hyundis cheap then?  How many of us have a 'quality family car'?  If we sold our 6 year old Berlingo I don't think we'd save much money buying something else!

I find Lidl mostly has reasonable quality stuff and lots of amazing non-food bargains such as DIY and household stuff. Leaderprice for a few things, like cat lit and sometimes fruit,  veg, wine.  Our local Ecomarche is very good for food, special offers on meat and we don't use lots of petrol to get there.  Their petrol is cheaper than the Ecomarche we went to in the Dordogne last week.

[Renaud]

I am only a holiday home owner in France - so we don't have the same year round presure of trying to live economically in France.

However when we bought our house, we thought that we should try and support local shops and businesses as much as possible. But it is very hard as most of the foodstuff sold at our local Super U one cannot buy in local family-run shops.

[Cendrillon]

In Gemozac, a bit far for you I know, there is an excellent butcher, not cheap but the meat is top quality, locally "grown" and well worth the extra money. Local Electrical shop and plumbers in the same town have also given us excellent service. In the Summer there is a fruit and veg stall that we like to support and sometimes it saves going into the supermarket, queueing and buying items that we had not intended to buy. We have a village shop and we try to buy some of our food there as well as the bread and daily newspaper.

[:)] So I go along with supporting the locals. However for full time living and watching the pennies / cents then I suppose the supermarkets have to win.