Aldi v Lidl

Part of our challenge to 'live on a shoestring' is to keep the grocery budget as low as we can. After this month's challenge to eat up as much food in the pantry and freezers as we can we have started to run low on lots of basics so yesterday I went to do a larger shop ready for the start of next month.

I debated whether to go to Aldi 9 miles away or Lidl 10 miles away. In the end I went to Lidl which takes less time to get to as the road is a dual carriageway and I did not have so much time. I went to Aldi this month and thought that it had gone very upmarket, so I was interested to see if anything had changed at Lidl.

When I arrived it was impossible to park in the car park, there were so many cars waiting that they were queuing out on to the road. I was in a hurry so took a chance on parking on the road and hoping that I would not overstay the free limit. I was very quick going around the store as they did not have many of the things I wanted !

I also noticed that quite a few of the prices had crept up so they were closer to the normal prices in Tesco. I think that I did save on the shopping but because of all the things they did not have in stock I then had to go and pay nearly the same amount of money again for the missing things in Tesco. For this reason I think that Lidl is going off my list of preferred places to shop and I'll go back to making a once a month trip to Aldi at a time when it is not so busy. However, I also think that I shall start keeping a price book so that I can check that with the added cost of travel it really still is cheaper to shop there !