#SAVINGS & FINANCIAL PRODUCTS
Leaving money in a current account looks like a neutral decision: you earn nothing, but you lose nothing either. Measured against twenty years of French inflation, the bill can be worked out precisely.
Published on August 24, 2026
France's harmonised index of consumer prices (HICP), published by Eurostat, averaged 86.47 in 2005 and 124.43 in 2025, on a 2015 = 100 base. Prices therefore rose 43.9% in twenty years. Ten thousand euros left in a current account paying nothing in 2005 buys in 2025 what 6,949 euros bought back then: 10,000 times 86.47, divided by 124.43. The loss of purchasing power is 3,050 euros, or 30.5% of the capital, and no bank statement ever displayed it. Put the other way round, it would take 14,390 euros in 2025 to buy what 10,000 euros bought in 2005.
What happens to the purchasing power of 10,000 euros left for twenty years in a French current account paying no interest?
The equivalent of 6,949 euros of 2005 is left: cumulative inflation of 43.9% between 2005 and 2025 erased 30.5% of the capital's purchasing power.
In other words: a current account does not make you lose euros, it makes you lose what those euros can buy. Over twenty years, that comes to almost a third.
Three caveats, because they matter
- The calculation assumes an account paying nothing. A regulated French Livret A savings account would have reduced the loss without necessarily erasing it: depending on the year, its rate ran above as well as below inflation.
- The HICP measures the rise in an average consumption basket. A household whose spending is concentrated on items that rose faster than average lost more; another lost less.
- The result depends entirely on the window chosen. The 2005-2025 period includes the inflation shock of 2022 and 2023, roughly 5.9% then 5.7% annual average increases on this same series: a twenty-year window ending in 2020 would have shown markedly less erosion.
Why it still matters: judging a holding by its nominal return — zero per cent, so neither gain nor loss — ignores the only return that decides what you will be able to buy: the real return, net of inflation. Over twenty years the gap is not a rounding detail, it is 3,050 euros out of 10,000.
For you
- Did you have a sense of the cost, in euros, of leaving savings in a non-interest-bearing account for twenty years?
- Do you look at the return on your holdings before or after inflation?
Source: Eurostat, harmonised index of consumer prices (HICP), France, annual averages for 2005 and 2025, 2015 = 100, series prc_hicp_aind; Ze Finance calculation.
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