Fee drag calculator
calculatorWhat is a 1% fee really costing me?
Compares identical plans across fee levels and expresses the gap in years of contributions — the number that tends to land.
Your plan
Add up the fund expense ratio, the platform fee and any advice fee.
A 0.75% fee over 33 years
Compared to a broad index fund at 0.03%.
- Lifetime cost of your fee
- $172,389
- Equivalent to
- 20.0 years
- Your final balance
- $1,019,794
14.5% of what you would have had
of your own contributions, handed over
The same plan at different fee levels
Identical contributions, identical gross returns. Only the cost changes.
- Index fund (0.03%)$1.2M
- Typical ETF (0.20%)$1.1M
- Active fund (0.75%)$1.0M
- Advised product (1.50%)$869k
- Layered fees (2.50%)$706k
Where the gap opens up
- At 0.03%
- At 0.75%
Why this matters
A 1% fee is not 1% of your return. At a 7% gross return it is about 14% of your return, every year, charged on a balance that is itself growing — so it compounds against you for exactly as long as your returns compound for you.
Sharpe's argument for why this matters is definitional rather than statistical. All investors together hold the market, so before costs the average actively managed dollar must earn exactly the market return. After costs it must earn less. This does not depend on any assumption about market efficiency or manager skill — it follows from addition.
This is also the only part of the return equation known in advance. Nobody can tell you next decade's equity return. Everyone can tell you the expense ratio before you buy.