What is the true cost of living in France?

I don’t care who owns Wetherspoons, the pubs have a great choice of beer at a decent price and the food is also good value. There are naff all bars in our nearest towns that come close to big Tim’s fine establishments, they all serve the same gassy lager and most close at 8pm.

@cat, why shouldn’t I be here?

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Along with James Dyson and the owner of JML who sells stuff made in China.
All supporters of Brexit.
Hit them in the pocket, the only thing that hurts them.

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Cauliflowers are cheaper in Burgundy.

Cauliflowers were 2,30€ each in Perigueux yesterday… delicious with cheese/mustard topping… :hugs: (OH always chooses carefully, the biggest looking one is not necessarily the best value… )

Sadly, the nearest Saturday market has been disrupted for many weeks… and suffered badly as a result… their produce is local and generally good value.

Hummmm…I tend to avoid local markets as they always seem so expensive to me (compared to supermarkets). I’d support them if they were more reasonably priced but ‘solidarity’ is expensive and I feel ripped off! They’re popular with tourists but… hey ho :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

I’m off to pick up an order from my local ‘Drive’ shortly but always pop into the shop to select my own fruit / veg - so I’ll have a price check and report back :wink:

(plus a nice big latte coffee from McD’s!!)

Simon… I reckon we all check out and try to buy best stuff at best prices… wherever we can find it… and that will vary all across the country.

More than likely, our local producers will start charging more, due to the losses they have incurred since the GJ lot got going… blast…

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Hello, french native here. I would like to say it depends where you live in France, some places are more expensive, some other are cheaper.

Avoid big cities with big infrastructures (high speed train stations, bus lines…) or just into a small city or hamlet close to it.

I live in Picardy, 10 kms far from the seashore (Baie de Somme - Côte d’Opale). I live in a 116m2 house with 4 rooms and 300m2 of garden. We pay per month
800€ per month of banking loan
house insurance is 30€
electricity is 80€
water is 20€
taxe foncière is 37€
taxe d’habitation is 40€
internet TV is 35€
our house uses fuel to warm, we pay the equivalent of 70€ per month on a full year

my wife drives a badass Peugeot 207 1.6l gas version with a 6 speed manual gearbox, really reliable but 6 liters/100 kms when she drives and 7 liters /100 kms when I drive. She used to pay 180€ of gas per month, now that the car has been converted to flexfuel E85, she just pays 100€ per month. Considering that when you work in France, you can substract a certain amount of this money to your fiscal net (frais kilométriques).
As for me, I commute by bicycle, as I am a fellow passionate cyclist, I ride my bike every day to work to save money, and that way I don’t need to waste my time to a gym center.

For healthcare, we both have mandatory employer mutuelle, I pay 40€ per month, everything is taken in charge, my wife pays 25€ per month, she just has to pay from her own pocket everything related to aesthetic surgery. Good thing as she is constantly teasing me with pornstar boobs.

Overall, I do consider that french people tend to pay daily higher prices and taxes, but finally it makes your life standards cheaper to my opinion.

I really think that France is not perfect, but to me it is a paradise filled with people who really think they live in hell.

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Brian, just want to relate to a little story from my past.
Back in the 1980s we lived in a village in north Warwickshire and the lease on the village shop came available, we were full of ideas about how we can turn the business around and make a success of the venture.
We invited a good family friend who was a professional small shop grocer we told him all our plans for the village shop and after listening to us he said, no matter what i say you will always have an answer for me and no matter what I say will not make you change your minds.
The business plan failed and set us back financially for a lot of years.
So Brian just go with your dreams you might be the one of the lucky ones that makes it work, if it does not then it will be a venture of a lifetime finding out.

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Difficult for us to compare property-related costs (including utilities etc) as our place is so different from either yours or our past UK houses - but in general terms we don’t find much overall difference in the cost of living. Some things are generally cheaper in France (travel, alcohol); ‘branded’ or mass-market lines are often cheaper in UK supermarkets.
It also depends where you are - when I go to the UK now its often to London, where I am daily shocked by the high prices and poor quality (eg. £3.50 for a cup of coffee nothing like as nice as I can get for less than half that here in Brittany - and I’m still (even after 7 years here) frequently astonished by the quality and price of our lunches out in little local restaurants here - there is no comparison.

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Oh just another thought - one really big difference is university education - we have 2 children about to go - one here in France and one to the UK (having already put 1 through uni in the UK, and we also have a fourth only 15 at present - so this is a big deal for us!) - we reckon the UK route might well cost £50,000 more than the French! So if you are foolish enough to have had lots of kids, I’d move to France tout suite!

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Fortunately Geof as a gay couple we have no kids, our only kids in the future will be goat related so that’s a huge cost saved lol

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I do agree that location does seem to make a huge difference we are in a very rural spot and Erneé (our nearest small town) seems to have almost everything we need. A Super U, a Carrefour, another cheapens chain I can’t remember the name of but lidl feel and price. We have an excellent DIY store which prices seems ok in and a brilliant little garden centre/pet store. We have found an excellent little cheap coffee shop and am absolutely amazing small bistro where the food and house wine are excellent I think our 3 course meal 2 carafe of red and café cam to about €32 which given it was our wedding night meal we were pretty chuffed with! London is very expensive now you are looking at £4-5 for a pint in a lot of places.

We did explore Laval but found that to be quite expensive compared to Erneé, the bigger city effect for sure. I am hoping the Dick Strawbridge, Escape to the Chateau effect won’t cause our area to become little Britain but only time will tell. He’s only about 25 minutes from us so we are hoping it won’t.

Hi Mick, that is good advice, I have been there before myself back in 2002, my ex and I both gave up well paid jobs in the Civil Service and bought a house on the remote north west coast of the Isle of Skye, it had stunning views and about 2/3rds of an acre and we planned to run it as a B&B, I want to move to France then but he wasn’t up for a foreign country and as his aunt runs a successful B&B and pub in Skye we settled on there. We bought the place for £103.000 We had a £1200 full structural survey and there was nothing of real note in it to put us off. Well three months after moving north we discovered the house had a natural spring under the floor that had washed the foundations out and rotted out the floors and joists! The roof had 40 buckets catching the rain and the timbers in the loft riddled with wood worm. The house was deemed unsafe and the entire rear near collapse. And it was recommended we convert the black barn in the garden move in there for two years while all but the front facade was torn down and rebuilt. The costs for this £380,000 it was simply no longer viable so we had to sell up and move back down south and I became a Civil Servant once more. The survey was not worth the paper it was written on. And we sold it on for £10,000 more than we paid for it. As they used the same highly qualified surveyor as us we were in luck! We had also already ordered £7500 or Argon filled triple glazed windows for the front facade by this point! Which they finished fitting on the day we moved out! So I do hear what you are saying about following your dreams! We lost £45,000 on our Scottish Adventure so I’m prepared for things to go wrong this time. Fortunately given what I paid for this house in France and bouyed by knowing we beat 50+ people to it in the first week, I know that if things do go wrong we can probably move it on quite quickly due to its charm and land. Indeed 7 people asked our agent to stay on the books throughout the sale in case we pulled out. So we do have some comfort there. But for sure we are going to give it our best shot and not be put off, we can cut our cloth accordingly the whole point of our move is to live a simple life together no frills or lavishness eating and preserving as much as we can grow etc. A pipe dream maybe but we have bought well and hope in time to make a go of it! Life is all to short I’ve served my country now for many years it’s time to make life work for David and I now!

Here’s the place in Scotland for comparison.

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Already worked out that you are the determined type, that is why you have got to go for it, not such a big risk with the sound of it this time.
Can see like myself that you are the type that will take a gamble some times, life’s to short not too.

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Yeah but…you need to compare like for like Brian - that’s pretty much what a beer costs here - average 2,60 - 3,00€ for a demi (25-33cl) - so double that for a pint! :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

I think there is a tendency for some immigrants (not you Brian!!) to wear their rose-tinted glasses when comparing prices. IMO France is bloody expensive - it needs to be to support the social and political structure. Not a bad thing - just a reality.

Added to that, prices (and choice) are very strictly controlled in France to avoid the dreaded concurrence déloyale !! Literally disloyal competition - imagine that :smile:

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Yep… 2 demi yesterday… 7€ and 1 coffee 1,65€… at a Chinese in Perigueux… but the food was non-stop and great stuff for 12€ a head…

It was OH’s birthday and his choice of venue… next week, my birthday, my choice is the Portuguese resto… not been there yet, will report back.

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By far my glasses are anything but rosey Simon, I’m a very practical hands on person and am under no illusions. I soent much of our last trip snap shoting prices in supermarkets and the Bricomarche to compare with here. A major lifestyle change will be required to achieve living in France but that is largely the whole appeal of why we want to do this. David and I are content to just convert the house right now a kitchen, and hall downstairs and open plan sitting room/bedroom with a simple bathroom upstairs. Nothing fancy. It may be that I have to delay a permanent move until I’m slightly older if the costs and income don’t stack up. But I’m 50 now, David is only 35 and I don’t want him to miss out on the best years of his life like I had to and not be living his dream. I had to walk away from mine once before (see my Scotland post) I don’t want to leave it too long again and be too old to enjoy it!

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Totally, totally with you!!!

Stella it’s interesting as I have noticed that those in the south west do seem to have higher prices than my immediate local area somethings compare like for like. But others seem much cheaper here. Just out of interest and no offence meant to anybody but do you think there is a Dordogne/Brit community premium in that area due to the high concentration of ex pats in the South West. It was just an observation that came to me. I know that’s a bit generalist but just wondered?

LOL possibly Brain but not down here in the deep South West - we’re further South than Nice in the South East - average salaries about the lowest in the country, high unemployment, little industry and yet high cost of living. Luckily, we can pop over the border/s :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye::stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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