France

As a dollar earner spending in France, you benefit from the dollar's reserve status — but local inflation still erodes what you buy. The calculator shows both sides.

CPI: World Bank (FP.CPI.TOTL.ZG). US M2: Federal Reserve FRED (M2SL). Reserve premium = cumulative M2 growth − cumulative US CPI.

Paris in 2019 was expensive by any measure — but for Americans earning dollars and converting to Euros, the purchasing power arithmetic was straightforward. The dollar bought roughly 0.89 Euros, rents in the Marais or the 11th arrondissement were high but finite, and the combination of quality of life and cultural richness made the premium feel worthwhile.

By 2024, the picture had shifted. Euro area inflation — driven initially by energy prices following the Ukraine conflict, then by broader supply chain and services inflation — reached 8.4% in 2022, the highest rate since the Euro's creation. France tracked slightly below the Eurozone average due to government energy price caps, but food, services, and housing still repriced meaningfully.

For dollar earners, the Euro's weakening against the dollar in 2022 and 2023 provided a genuine offset — at times the dollar bought nearly 1.05 Euros. But this benefit was partially illusory. A weaker Euro raised import prices inside France, contributing to local inflation that eroded some of the exchange rate gain. And the reserve premium — the gap between US M2 growth and US CPI — compounded against the Euro through global reserve dynamics that the raw exchange rate does not reflect.

For a US expat in Paris, the real question is what their dollar-converted purchasing power actually looked like year by year — not just the exchange rate, but what that Euro amount bought at the boulangerie, the landlord, and the utility company. This calculator does that calculation properly, combining Euro CPI with the reserve premium to show the honest number.