An expense ratio is always quoted as a small percentage — 0.05%, 0.5%, 1%. Small percentages are easy to ignore. Our investment fee calculator exists because that instinct is expensive.
- Isolates the cost — instead of showing one final balance, it runs the same savings plan at your full return and at your return minus the fee, and shows the gap as its own headline number.
- Compounds the fee too — the calculator doesn’t just apply the fee once; it lets the lost growth compound the same way your contributions do, which is why a “small” 1% fee can cost six figures over decades.
- Shareable — put your own starting balance, contribution, and fee in the link and send the exact comparison to whoever’s asking “does this matter?”
- Private — the math runs in your browser. We never see your numbers.
On $50,000 growing at 7% with $500/month for 30 years, the difference between a 0.05% index fund and a 1.0% actively managed fund is over $200,000 at the same market return — worth five minutes with your own numbers. The tool is also embeddable if you write about investing.