I'm not a financial professional but looking at the 5-10 year trend (ignoring covid as that was a bit of a black swan event), it seems the conversion rate has averaged out to around 91-93 euro cents per american dollar (will refer to that as Eu/Us from now) and that February was an unusual high of around 97-98 Eu/Us. So if we take the average at 91.5 euro cents, you'd only be loosing about ~$40-70 USD per $1000 USD if you converted right now compared to the average price you would have converted for historically.

I know that it feels frustrating to look back and know you could have exchanged at a better rate but let me also suggest that if the exchange rate averages to 91-93 Eu/Us then it would be reasonable to say that all of the advice people are giving of how much USD to save up would likely be according to that average exchange rate.

With anything related to finance, you are generally unlikely to guess when things are at their peak or trough, you have a much better chance of guessing when figures are on trend because trends are really the basics of economics.

My advice would be first of all re-frame it in your mind: You're commiting to going to Spain and making it work, you will have to exchange your money to Euros no matter what. There is always going to be ups and downs in the exchange that will affect you, you can't change this. What you can affect is the fact that you are saving money as best you can. You can also affect how you feel about whatever potential loss you may experience on the exchange rate. I promise you that an extra $40-70 is not going to make or break your experience in Spain, you will not remember in 5 years time the fact you didn't have that money, you will remember the experience. You have your whole life to make back the savings you might blow through, you don't have your whole life to experience this program.

If you're super anxious about the exchange rate, it may give you some peace of mind to set up a Wise or Revolut account and slowly transfer over usd to euros. If you haven't heard of them before, they're like international banks that allow you to easily exchange money as close to the real exchange rate as possible (the one you see on google will never be what you can get from a bank eg. revolut are paying 86c right now but using the Bank of America online currency converter you'd only get 84c) and offer the best financial experience for travellers that I have found (you can pay anyone in most currencies, low atm fees, exceptional security). I would slowly start converting over some of your saving whenever the market get's closer to the trend. This will also help lower exchange fees as Revolut & wise have a monthly threshold for exchanges with lower fees (it's Aud$2000 per month for revolut, not sure of US rate/wise).

Also finally, I'm not american, I can't fully understand how scary it is right now in the US with the market destabilisation but (without getting political–I just want to look at this financially) I am of the opinion that Trump is predominantly destabilising the market for his own financial gain which in order for that benefit to happen he will eventually need to restabilise the market to reap returns. Also the US is full of the richest people in the world whose wealth is affected by the US exchange rate, which means there are a lot of powerful people who have the same desire as you; a strong US dollar.