Advisory Fee Calculator

See what your advisory fee actually costs over time, compared to paying for advice a la carte or managing your own investments. Free, no account needed, and everything stays in your browser.

1% fee = ~25% of end portfolio (not 1% of your money)

Because the fee compounds against you every year, it takes a share of the ending balance far larger than the rate suggests.

Step 1Which accounts do you have?

A firm doesn't hold one pot of money, it usually holds several separate accounts, each with its own statement and often its own rate. Pick everything that applies. If you're not sure, that's the normal answer, and there's a button for it.

Opens the email that asks them to list everything.

Step 2What does each one hold, and cost?

Give a range if you don't know the exact figure, but keep it tight, within $30,000, so the answer stays meaningful. Every result is then shown as a range too.

For anything not in the list above.

Assumptions

Identical across every scenario, only the fees change between them.

Paying for advice on its own

A middle path: you hold the funds yourself, and pay a professional a set fee for a plan or a review when you want one, rather than a percentage of everything, every year, forever.

These are placeholder figures, not a quote and not a market rate, advice-only and flat-fee planners price very differently from one another, and the only number worth modelling is one you have actually been quoted. The scenario charges this amount every N years and otherwise holds the same funds as the self-managed case.
Whether a person is better served by ongoing management, periodic advice, or neither is not something this page can answer. It only shows what each costs.

The self-managed scenario

What the same money looks like with no advisory layer on top, holding funds directly and paying only what the funds themselves charge. These figures are yours to set.

Broad index funds commonly charge between 0.03% and 0.20% a year; actively managed funds charge considerably more. One-time costs of moving are set per account in step 2, since they differ sharply by account type.
What this scenario does not model: it compares costs only. It assumes identical returns to every other scenario, the same holdings, the same discipline in a downturn, the same rebalancing, the same tax handling. It carries no view on whether that's realistic for any particular person, and it is not a suggestion to do it.
If these numbers are accurate
Ending value after 30 years, by yearly cost
What you pay in fees
,
Estimated total forgone due to fees
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What leaves this page