Wow! 2,50 € EACH per day? Can you give us a few examples of menus?

Sounds reasonable, fruit and veg are cheap at the market, 1/2 kilo mince 2.50€`s pack, chicken breast just over 1€.
Two meals there for a start, with enough left for scrambled eggs and toast for brekkies.
;-))

OK, but what about dairy products, bread, rice/pasta, etc.. to make up balanced meals, and all the necessary odds-and-ends? My elderly neighbours on English pensions eat very little meat or fish, and spend 70 € a week for two, AND they have seasonal vegetables from her garden. (Mind you, we're in France, which may make a difference...)

Subject to how much you can take home in the UK and having made allowances for the cost of you living there & allowing flights to & fro at least monthly, if not fortnightly, I'd say that's the best option too. We work on that system: OH Uk based, comes to & fro about every fortnight, sometimes more sometimes less, usually 4 or 5 days at a time (sometimes more, sometimes less). We're not the only ones doing this by a long chalk. Friend who's a prison officer works a week of nights then is here for a week. Friend who's a plumber works here and then goes back to supplement the income with bigger contracts there. There are downsides with all ways of looking at it, though.... how do you think the family would cope with you being an itinerant father, you'd have to work even harder at integrating when you were in Spain since you wouldn't be here all the time.

That is about what we spend a week and a lot of it is bought at a French shop. ;-))
Are they buying British ripoff stuff, or have they converted to the local equivilent ?
Rice and pasta, margerine, milk and wine are cheap enough too, 2 kilos of oranges for 1€.

Being elderly, they don't go to the UK very often, and they eat French.
I'm still interested to know how two people can eat "healthily" (i.e. a varied diet providing enough calcium, iron and necessary oligo-elements) on 5 € a day.

Maybe someone'll work it out for us, but I wouldn't be surprised - the average person needs a lot fewer calories than we tend to assume so the actual amount of food is relatively small.. making it well balanced shouldn't be so difficult if you look at the variety of pulses/nuts/veg available plus some dairy, fish & very little meat.

Where on earth can you buy chicken breast for two for 1 euro. I spent 12 euros in our local market on fresh fruit and veg and nearly died at the cost.

well you can only imagine what kind of chicken that may be (if its chiken at all ) ----for 1 euro!!!!!

Where do you live crispy?

Just curious as we find food, and like you say, everything else, rather expensive here in San Sebastian, and we sometimes wonder what it's like in other areas.

Hi Featherbum I live in Chiclana de la Frontera near to Cadiz, Costa de la Luz; Chiclanagirl lives in the same area in fact we are meeting for lunch tomorrow so I expect we will have a good old moan about the cost of living.

It is a very popular holiday resort for the wealthy Spanard (if there's any of those left that is) A lovely quite place for 9 months of the year and then for 15 weeks in the summer it goes made, during this time I travel to a small white village to get my shopping about 15/20 klm away to avoid the crowds and the summer increase in prices. Last summer in the fish market they were asking 15eur for a kilo of Almejes once the summer is over they go back down to about 7eur, of course this could be due to the season I don't know enough about fish to know when the season for certain fish/shellfiish starts and ends. At the moment Dorado is 6 eur a kilo but in July and August it goes up to about 11eur, I even see it for 16eur last summer.

I too hear people talk about the cheapness of things in other area's, I was chatting to a lady who has family in Madrid and they have now stopped coming to Chiclana for the summer break as they feel compared to other areas it is very expensive. I cannnot undestand why because Chiclana area is very much a working town, if I travel to Puerto Real about 30klm away things are a little cheaper but then the choice is not so great, so swings and roundabout I guess. Mal and I enjoy going out to other places and to explore what is on offer there, after all we have nothing else to do with our days as hard work is behind us now.

A few examples.
Milk (skimmed) 1ltr €0.54c
Eggs 1 doz (large free range) €1.20
2 x pigs kidney €0.30c
5kgs potatoes €2.00
2kgs carrots €1.50
2kgs oranges €1.00
1 very large cauli €1.00
2kgs onions €1.00
1/2kg liver €0.80c
2kgs pork ribs €4.00
2x chicken breasts (large, pink, no water added) €3.20
2kgs onions €0.90c
1kg minced pork € 3.20
1kg tomatoes (class A) €1.00 class B €0.80c
1.5 kg pork tender loin €4.80
Extra virgin olive oil €17 for 5ltrs
just a few prices from the last few weeks

have highlighted above ,just an example of tesco online which we use,obviously comparisons wont be an exact match but will give an idea of food prices at the cheapest (?)supermarket.

we use online shopping as we often dont have time or dont want the hassle of packed supermarkets as we could only get there on a saturday or 12.00 a.m and the way we live now cooking a good well balanced meal is as bad as it is to say , a hassle.

this is part of lifestyle change that would be more than welcome.

also on another note, looking at rental prices.

cant remember exactly where they were , poss 10 k inland aroud cadiz area but 3 bed acc was avg £650-700 euro pm. what would these averages have been say 1 year ago ? and as areas pick up and more tourists are coming over again , will this cut off the supply of long term lets forcing those prices up? i'm also looking at it as when the euro was say 1.50 against the £ , i would have been getting maybe 2 more months rental for the same money as now OR would those prices have been higher anyway?

not really up on these sort of things and have never until now really bothered about exchange rates but again , it's another major consideration to take into account.

lee

Ah Cadiz, we have been talking about visiting (cant remember the name of the place, my friend recommended it as she goes there every summer) i hear its very pretty there! Cant remember the name of the place, will fnd out and ask your opinion!

As for food prices- i only have the uk to compare it to really, as i have never been a grown up in spain before
then again i seem to remember, from previous holidays at home, that it used to be cheaper?
Tell you a few things that i think are HORRIFICALLY more expensive than the uk, see what others think? cause i am wondering it its just san sebastian that is so expensive????
(same as your area, this is, or was lol, a wealthy kind of place).

-shampoo and conditioner i'd say it costs double
-make up- sometimes double, even triple.
-perfume -lets not even go there, i just order online.
-home things (furniture, decor etc, shops seem to only be mega posh, nothing in between??).
-gym memberships- 80-90 euros per monht - luckily we have a nice beach for long walks here instead!
-white goods - we bought a tumble drier in eroski the other day, 230 euros, same day it was in argos for 130.

cant think of anything else, would be good to know what others think- and to find out if we just live in a mega expensive place!

I think all electrical good are expensive, we bought a 22inch tv for our conservatory just before Christmas after spending days going from one store to another we ended up paying 345eur for it, it has a built in DVD player and it was by far the cheapest one we could find. Back in UK a couple of weeks ago we could have picked up the same thing for £199.00. We are having to replace our oven if we can't get the part we need for it, so I have started looking already the same model is over 600eeur not sure what we will do as this seems a lot of money, well have to do a lot of research before we buy.

Big furniture is very expensive compared to UK, when we moved here we went to a local bed shop and they wanted 6ooeur for the bed base and another 6ooeur for the mattress, told them they were having a laugh and we would think about it. Ha Ha never went back but the cheapest we could find that was 650eur for a double bed. It was just for the spare room so didn't want to pay an arm and a leg.

Don't do makeup or gym so can't comment, (perfume I buy once every couple of years in dutyfree) shampoo works out expensive because I have highlights and the sun/sea and pool water really causes a lot of damage to my hair. My shampoo I usually pay 12 euros a bottle and about 10 for the conditioner. I don't let anyone else use it, for OH and visitors I buy Murkydona's for 3euro.

Let me know the name of the place when you find out, the local beach to me is called La Barrosa.