The Fee Check.
Small percentages, big numbers. Plug in your balance, your fund fees and your advisor’s cut, and see what they add up to over thirty years.
How to use it
- Enter your balance and what you add each month.
- Add your funds’ expense ratios. One average is fine, or list them fund by fund.
- Enter your advisor’s yearly percentage (0 if you don’t have one).
- See the thirty-year number. Then go have a very friendly chat with your advisor.
Your numbers
Sample numbers. Replace them with yours.
Fees cost you
$463,703
over 30 years.
Who gets the $463,703
- Advisor fee$0
- Fund expenses$0
Fees paid vs. growth you never got
- Extra fees you pay$0
- Growth those dollars never earned$0
Watch them drift apart
Year-by-year breakdown
| Year | Low-cost | Your setup | Fee gap | Fees paid |
|---|
Fees paid = total fees taken from your setup so far.
Questions to ask your advisor
This isn’t anti-advisor. A good one can be worth every penny. You just deserve to know how many pennies.
- “What’s my all-in fee?” Your fee plus the fund expense ratios plus anything else. Ask for last year’s total in dollars, not just a percent.
- “Are you a fiduciary, all the time, on every account?” That means legally required to put your interests first. You want a yes with no asterisk.
- “How do you get paid?” A % of assets, commissions, a cut from the funds you’re in? All of it.
- “Do you offer flat-fee or hourly options?” Many advisors do, and it can cost a lot less as your balance grows.
- “Is there a cheaper version of this fund?” Same kind of investments, lower expense ratio. If not, why not?
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The fine print
Educational only, not financial advice. Returns are hypothetical. Real markets go up and down instead of growing in a straight line, and this leaves out taxes, trading costs and inflation.
How the math works: each month your balance grows at the return you set (compounded monthly), then the all-in fee comes out as a share of your balance, so over a year a 1.75% fee takes exactly 1.75% (7% before fees becomes about 5.13% after). Contributions land at the end of each month, or at the end of each year if you pick yearly. “Fees cost you” is the low-cost ending balance minus yours. It’s split between the advisor and the funds in proportion to the extra fee each one adds, and between the extra fees you pay and the growth those dollars would have earned. Fund by fund, your expense ratio is the average weighted by each fund’s share.