What are you really paying?
Advisory fees are quoted as percentages. They are collected in dollars. Enter your numbers and see the arithmetic — nothing more.
The arithmetic
$1,000,000 at 1.25% = $12,500 in fees, every year.
- Advisory fee (1.25%)$12,500
- Fund expenses (0.00%)$0
- Per month (annual ÷ 12)$1,042
- Over ten years (10 × annual)$125,000
The ten-year figure is simple multiplication — ten times the annual fee, before any market movement. This is fee arithmetic, not a projection.
This calculator is an educational tool, not financial, investment, tax, or legal advice. It multiplies the figures you enter and does nothing else. Actual fees vary by firm, account type, share class, and the services provided, and some costs never appear as a single line item. No outcome of any kind is implied. What you actually pay is set by your own agreements and disclosures — those documents are the evidence.
A percentage is only the first line.
The advisory fee is the number you were quoted. A line-item fee audit reads every document that touches your accounts and lists what each layer costs, in dollars.
Advisory & platform fees
The stated management fee, plus platform, custodial, and account-level charges. These are debited directly and are easy to see — once you know which page of the statement to read.
Fund-level expenses
Expense ratios, share-class differences, and 12b-1 distribution fees inside mutual funds and ETFs. They never appear on a statement as a debit; they are netted out of the fund itself.
Costs without a line item
Trading spreads, markups on bonds, cash sweep arrangements, and insurance product charges. All of it is disclosed — in documents most people have never been handed.
Put a dollar figure on every layer.
The Fee Audit Guide maps where each fee appears and which disclosure document lists it. Or bring your statements and we will read them together.
Prefer to talk it through?
One hour, one agenda: what you own and what it costs.