If your a tad hard up thread.. "All ideas welcome"
 

Times get harder a lot of folk can miss the small details that can make all the difference when in a foreign speaking country please feel free to add any tips or loop holes you have found but to kick it off.

You can get a bit of help if you don't quite qualify CMU medical cover where the Assurance Maladie will give you a check payable to your complémentaire santé "Top Up insurance" which can help if your on a low income they dont pay all of it but a decent contribution can be obtained.

Aide pour une Complémentaire Santé

Re: If your a tad hard up thread.. "All ideas welcome"
 

if you are in diffiiculty , go and visit your assistante sociale (ask at the marie) When we hit hard times we found ours very kind and very thoughtful and helpful!

Re: If your a tad hard up thread.. "All ideas welcome"
 

Good initiative!:thumbsup:
IMO the thread should go in the READ ME Section, so it's permanently visible...

Re: If your a tad hard up thread.. "All ideas welcome"
 

To get to the UK try Megabus eg Brive to London £1

Usually Paris to London is £8 to £20, But Paris to anywhere in the UK (Manchester/ Edinburgh / Inverness )is nearly always £25

Barcelona 'Toulouse or Brive to Inverness etc is also usually £25

Re: If your a tad hard up thread.. "All ideas welcome"
 

Where do I get a quote from megabus please?

Re: If your a tad hard up thread.. "All ideas welcome"
 

Google is your friend....

Re: If your a tad hard up thread.. "All ideas welcome"
 

megabus uk or Europe (they're in the US as well)

If you click onto France under "country" you will see what stops are on offer as they seem to be expanding their network eapidly

Re: If your a tad hard up thread.. "All ideas welcome"
 

Thanks very much for this tip - Can't do 24hr buses anymore, (Limoges-Liverpool!), but Paris-London will be very useful! :goodpost:

Re: If your a tad hard up thread.. "All ideas welcome"
 

Its five and a half hours on the bus from Limoges to Paris as opposed to three or four on the train. Travelling by Train means crossing Paris

Re: If your a tad hard up thread.. "All ideas welcome"
 

Unless you are averse to Ryanair, I would recommend the Liverpool Limoges route.

Spending the night at Liverpool Airport for the plane at 7am is a bit grim, but the return at about 10 am should be OK .

I walk from the airport to Landouge and then get a town bus for 1 euro 30.
The walk takes about 45 minutes, but there is another bus which would only mean a 20 minute walk

Re: If your a tad hard up thread.. "All ideas welcome"
 

For information about the new regulations allowing you to travel by long distance bus/autocar WITHIN France look at the thread
" Coach Travel within France- At Last! "

Re: If your a tad hard up thread.. "All ideas welcome"
 

A friend took the megabus from Toulouse to Barcelona last weekend - she was talking to the bus driver (fellow glaswegian) who told her that to get the €1 fares she needed to look 2 months in advance at 2.00am because otherwise they were gone......

she was happy with getting into Barcelona this way.

Re: If your a tad hard up thread.. "All ideas welcome"
 

Have all the money saving tips dried up? Surely there are more issues to living here while short of cash than just travel back to UK.

Re: If your a tad hard up thread.. "All ideas welcome"
 

I was thinking only the other day that no one has posted for a long time!
So here goes....
If you need a change of wardrobe, our local clothes supermarket, for example, is selling everything from between 1 and 3 € in the Sales. Or there's always half-decent second-hand clothing to be found in "friperies".
Otherwise, during lean times, shop in Lidl, Netto, Aldi, etc..., and/or replace meat/fish with eggs, dairy products and vegetable proteins, don't eat out or entertain, stop drinking/smoking, etc.... But those who are going through a bad patch know this already....
And I'll repeat the reply in #2, that, if things are really bad, the Assistante Sociale at your Mairie is there to advise if you can't pay rent/utility/medical bills, etc....

Re: If your a tad hard up thread.. "All ideas welcome"
 

If you're short of cash, paying the fare to travel back to the UK when you don't need to would be the last thing you'd want to do, I would have thought :eek:

My top tip at the mo' is Aldi's boxes of pink wine, less that 6€, lasts 2 people the best part of a week and really very quaffable. They also do red for slightly more but it's a bit rough.

Re: If your a tad hard up thread.. "All ideas welcome"
 

There's a whole load of sites on the internet with good ideas on how to save money....
a google search of "frugal living" will give a good many of them

One of my all round favourite sites is mrmoneymustache.com The forum is excellent with people always willing to help out and encouraging you to learn how to do something rather than pay someone to do it.

If you are very hard up - and I knew of several expat divorced women in France who were in this situation - then there are the restos du coeur that will give you a meal for free. A friend of mine was in a very tough spot financially for a while, her kids got free meals at school so she went to resto du coeur at lunchtime and her grocery bill went right down, allowing her to survive this awful time.

Don't forget to go and see the assistante sociale at the mairie to ask for sources of help.

Re: If your a tad hard up thread.. "All ideas welcome"
 

As far as I understand, you have to take a ton of paperwork to prove that you're in need, before the Mairie will grant your children free school lunches and before the Restos du Coeur will register you.
I feel so sorry for divorced women/mothers, with few resources if their spouses don't pay the alimony due - French bureaucracy adds stress to the distress....:(

Re: If your a tad hard up thread.. "All ideas welcome"
 

yes, french bureaucracy. :thumbdown:

I should also add that these divorced women were also unable to move back to the UK because their fathers refused to allow the children to move permanently.

Re: If your a tad hard up thread.. "All ideas welcome"
 

I'm very pleased to see new interest in reviving this thread. Spare a thought for those who are struggling here and add your bit.

Re: If your a tad hard up thread.. "All ideas welcome"
 

Lunches are a very cheap meal for me. In the cold weather it's usually bread and soup and the soup is basically leftover veg and whatever, so the only cost is the bread. And I suppose, the cost of electricity to heat the soup. Doesn't get too samey because the soup kind of evolves day by day according to what I chuck into the liquidiser.

Re: If your a tad hard up thread.. "All ideas welcome"
 

Some things are so obvious that I normally wouldn't think of suggesting them. For example, choose inexpensive cuts of meat and make pot au feu in a pressure-cooker with cheap cuts of beef/pork/lamb; choose mackerels (baked en papillotte) or "lieu noir" instead of more expensive fish. Drink tap water, not bottled water. The list is endless....
I mentioned above that those who are struggling should avoid entertaining - I meant long visits by family and friends, not the odd dinner, and should have added unless the guests pay their share of the shopping bill. Not good for the morale if you don't socialise!

Re: If your a tad hard up thread.. "All ideas welcome"
 

Three years ago , I wrote about Megabus.


Megabus sold their business to flix bus about a year ago although you might still see the blue megabuses on French roads.


Since Megabus opened up the market by their challeng in the French Courts, there have been a number of companies operating long distance buses.


I think the main players are Flix bus and Ouibus (SNCF)


The cheap rate for trips other than Paris seems to be 12 euros,


For Brive to Bordeaux, this is probably less than the autoroute tolls.

Re: If your a tad hard up thread.. "All ideas welcome"
 

I'm assuming most folk avoid the airport shuttlebus and use the local buses instead. Remember most cities have a ticket which lasts for an hour so the need to change buses does not increase the cost. The ticket is valid for boarding your final bus an hour from the time you boarded the first bus.


If you visit London , this system now operates there as well. After years of Boris saying that it was not possible, the new Mayor had it installed in two days.

Re: If your a tad hard up thread.. "All ideas welcome"
 

I am not hard up but on the other hand we live on UK pensions so the way things are going we could get there fairly soon.

My expertse is in food and I could and maybe write a book on the saving that can be made here.

First, i want to mention somethhing we have done all our lives which is use the skills you have and sap them for skills you need rather than get into the hassle of getting paid cash and all that entails.

For example if you were a teacher then help a local youngster with their brevet or Bac' That way we have had a rood repaired, a large tree felled and a load of stuff taken to the dump, a load of firewood etc

We gorw our vegetables and have hens and we swap surplus with other gardeners. I make all my own preserves and swap some of them for rabbits, hares and joints of venison and wild boar.

We help a couple of restaurants with the English translation of their menus in return for a bottle of wine or a free meal.

At the same time as saving money it has meant we intergrate with our neighbours and friends.

Re: If your a tad hard up thread.. "All ideas welcome"
 

GrannyB :goodpost: Excellent initiatives!
So sorry to learn of your health difficulties in another post.
Bon courage. :drinkwine:

Re: If your a tad hard up thread.. "All ideas welcome"
 

Since the thread title does say "All ideas welcome"

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/british...203bce839b.jpg

https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/comparison.jsp

In our own case it doesn't take into account the €180/mth we were paying for our mutuelle.

Re: If your a tad hard up thread.. "All ideas welcome"
 

Living as we do within 20-25 mins of the Spanish border, we often shop in Spain as prices there are very competitive. There are the ventas that are dotted along the Spanish side of the border - excellent for filling up the car, and for general household grocery shopping - and then there's Irun and San Sebastian for clothes etc.

Re: If your a tad hard up thread.. "All ideas welcome"
 

All the ideas on this thread so far seem to be about money saving ideas, which is fine. But does anybody have any ideas for earning money in France?

Re: If your a tad hard up thread.. "All ideas welcome"
 

Valerie at start a business in france has been posting a few ideas on her FB page
https://www.facebook.com/startbusinessinfrance/