Singapore

Singapore holds dollar reserves and settles trade in USD. Every time the Fed expands M2, that premium compounds against the SGD, on top of domestic inflation.

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

Singapore does something almost no other country does: its central bank, the Monetary Authority of Singapore, uses the exchange rate itself as its primary inflation-fighting tool. While the Fed adjusts interest rates, the MAS adjusts the slope, width, and center of a currency band. The result since the 1980s has been a SGD that trends gradually stronger against the dollar over long periods — by design.

For a finance or tech expat who moved to Singapore in 2015 earning a dollar-denominated package, the shift has been real and measurable. The SGD traded around 1.42 to the dollar that year. By 2023 it had moved closer to 1.32. That's roughly a 7% structural appreciation, on top of Singapore's domestic inflation running around 4–6% during the post-pandemic surge. Your dollar salary bought meaningfully less Orchard Road rent, less private school tuition, less of the lifestyle you budgeted for.

For investors watching Asia from a dollar base, Singapore is a different story than most regional peers. The SGD doesn't blow up during emerging market panics the way the Indonesian rupiah or Thai baht can. It's the currency of a AAA-rated sovereign with massive foreign reserves relative to GDP. Holding SGD-denominated assets has historically offered dollar investors a quiet, low-drama appreciation kicker that doesn't show up in the asset's nominal return but absolutely shows up in your net worth.

The honest complexity here is that Singapore's inflation and the SGD's strength can move in opposite directions simultaneously — making the real purchasing power calculation less obvious than it looks. That's exactly what this calculator works through for you: strip out the noise, apply the actual inflation and exchange rate data across any time window, and see the real number.