How investment fee calculator works
An expense ratio is the annual fee a fund or plan charges as a percentage of your assets — for example a 0.50% expense ratio means you pay $5 per year for every $1,000 invested. Even a small percentage compounds dramatically over decades, so this calculator shows exactly how much a fee costs you over time.
Enter your initial investment, the expected annual return, the expense ratio (in percent), the number of years, and any monthly contribution. The calculator computes the future value twice: once at your full return (no fee) and once at the return reduced by the expense ratio (with fee). The difference is the dollars lost to fees.
The loss as a percentage puts that dollar amount in context: a $30,000 loss on a $300,000 balance is a 10% drag. Because the fee is a percentage of an ever-growing balance, the dollar cost snowballs with compounding — which is why a low-cost index fund can beat a higher-cost fund even with identical gross returns. This is an estimate for education only, not investment advice.