Calculate the cumulative impact of management fees, advisory fees, and trading costs on portfolio returns over decades.
Two portfolios can earn the same assumed market return yet finish far apart when one carries recurring costs. This calculator projects a starting portfolio over a chosen horizon, once before fees and once after the entered management fees, advisory fees, and trading costs. It then shows the cumulative difference in value. The easily missed point is that this difference is not only the charges deducted. It also includes the future growth those deducted dollars can no longer earn, so a modest annual fee can create a much larger long-term gap.
Starting with the entered balance, return assumption, and investment period, the tool produces a no-fee baseline by compounding the portfolio. It produces a fee-adjusted path with the specified management, advisory, and trading cost inputs reducing growth. Because both paths share the same starting value, assumed return, and horizon, their difference isolates the modeled effect of fees rather than a change in market performance.
The reported fee impact is the gap between the two projected ending values. That gap contains direct costs and opportunity cost: each charge lowers the amount available to compound in later years. Read the result as a scenario based on fixed inputs. It does not determine which fee was actually charged on an account statement or reconstruct irregular purchases, sales, or withdrawals.
Because a deduction has two effects: it removes money immediately and prevents that money from earning later returns. The no-fee path compounds from a progressively larger balance, while the fee-adjusted path compounds from a smaller one. Over a long horizon, this lost growth can account for a substantial part of the displayed difference.
It can compare cost scenarios when you enter comparable assumptions and all relevant recurring charges. It cannot decide whether higher fees are justified, predict either adviser's performance, or fully model tiered asset-based schedules, flat retainers, performance fees, taxes, or services not represented by the inputs. Compare the advisers' disclosures and use the calculator for the cost component only.
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