Retirement Savings Calculator

How to Use This Tool

Enter what you have, what you add, and the fee you pay. The fee is shown as money rather than as a percentage, because a percentage is the format in which it is easiest to ignore.

Why 1% is not 1%

The fee is charged on your whole balance, every year, for as long as you hold the investment. Your money compounds upwards and the fee compounds against it, so the damage is not a fixed slice — it grows with the pot. Saving 500 a month at 7% gross:

years    no fee      0.1%       0.5%       1.0%    1% costs

  10     86,542     86,068     84,202     81,940     5.3%
  20    260,463    257,324    245,210    231,020    11.3%
  30    609,985    598,085    553,089    502,258    17.7%
  40  1,312,407  1,276,125  1,141,809    995,745    24.1%

Same fee, four times the damage, because it has four decades to compound

Ten years in, a 1% fee has cost 5.3% of the pot, and it looks like a rounding error. Forty years in it has cost 24.1%. The reason is that by then the balance is mostly investment growth rather than contributions, and the fee is charged on all of it.

The comparison that makes it concrete

Over those forty years the 1% fee costs 316,661. Total contributions were 240,000 — 500 a month for 480 months. The fee took 132% of everything ever paid in. Every pound of contribution bought about a pound and thirty pence of fees, and the difference between a 1% product and a 0.1% one is roughly a third of the final pot.

The year your money starts outworking you

There is a point where the pot's annual growth exceeds the year's contributions, and after it your saving rate stops being the main lever. The surprise is where that point sits:

Starting from zero, at 7% NET

  100 a month  -> year 11
  500 a month  -> year 11
 1000 a month  -> year 11
 5000 a month  -> year 11

By net return rate, saving 500 a month

  2%  -> year 36      7%  -> year 11
  3%  -> year 24      8%  -> year 10
  4%  -> year 18      9%  -> year  9
  5%  -> year 15     10%  -> year  8
  6%  -> year 13

How much you save does not move the crossover; the net return rate is all of it

Starting from zero, both the balance and the contributions scale linearly with how much you put in, so the amount cancels out entirely. Someone saving 100 a month and someone saving 5000 a month reach the crossover in the same year.

Two things do move it. A starting balance pulls it much closer — at 6% net, 50,000 already invested brings the crossover from year 13 to year 6, and 100,000 makes it year 1. That is the real argument for getting money in early, rather than for getting more money in.

And the fee delays it, which is the same drag showing up in a second place. These are net rates, so a 1% charge moves you down one row of that table:

Effect of a 1% fee on the crossover year

gross 7%  ->  net 6%     year 11 becomes year 13    +2 years
gross 5%  ->  net 4%     year 15 becomes year 18    +3 years
gross 3%  ->  net 2%     year 24 becomes year 36   +12 years

The lower the return, the more of it a fixed fee removes — and the longer you wait

The last row is the one worth staring at. At a 3% gross return a 1% fee is a third of the return, so the crossover slips by twelve years. Fee drag is not proportionally worse in bad markets — it is absolutely the same, which makes it proportionally enormous.

What counts as your fee

Add up everything: the fund's ongoing charge or expense ratio, the platform or administration fee, any adviser fee, and any transaction costs disclosed separately. It is common for people to know the fund charge and not the platform charge, which is how a "0.2% fund" becomes a 1% arrangement.

What this model does not do

It assumes a constant return every year, which no market delivers. Real portfolios have sequence risk: the same average return produces a different outcome depending on when the bad years arrive, and that matters enormously near retirement when the pot is largest. This tool isolates fee drag and compounding. It is general information, not financial advice, and it ignores tax entirely.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much do investment fees really cost?

Far more than the percentage suggests, because the fee is levied on the whole balance every year. Saving 500 a month at 7% gross for forty years, a 1% fee costs 316,661 out of a 1,312,407 pot — 24.1%, and 132% of everything contributed.

Why does the same fee cost more over longer periods?

Because the fee is charged on the balance, and the balance grows. After ten years a 1% fee has taken 5.3% of the pot; after forty it has taken 24.1%. The later years are when the pot is biggest, so they are also when the fee is most expensive.

Is a 1% fee bad?

It is expensive relative to what is available. Broad index funds are commonly under 0.2%, and the difference between 1% and 0.1% over forty years is about a third of the final pot in this model. Whether it is worth paying depends on what you get for it, which is a judgement rather than an arithmetic question.

When does my investment growth exceed my contributions?

At 7% net starting from zero, in year 11 — and that year is the same whether you save 100 a month or 5000, because both sides scale with the amount. Lower net returns push it out: year 15 at 5%, year 24 at 3%, year 36 at 2%. Note that these are returns after fees, so a 1% charge on a 7% gross return moves you to the 6% row, which is year 13.

Do fees delay the point where growth overtakes contributions?

Yes, and by more than you would expect at low returns. A 1% fee turns a 7% gross return into 6% net and pushes the crossover from year 11 to year 13. On a 3% gross return the same 1% fee leaves 2% net and pushes it from year 24 to year 36 — twelve years, because the fee is a third of the whole return.

What fees should I be adding up?

The fund's ongoing charge or expense ratio, the platform or administration fee, any adviser fee, and separately disclosed transaction costs. People often know one of these and not the others, which is how a cheap fund ends up inside an expensive arrangement.

Does this account for market crashes?

No. It assumes the same return every year, so it isolates fee drag and compounding. Real sequences of returns matter a great deal, particularly close to retirement when the pot is at its largest, and no constant-return model captures that.

A 1% Fee Takes 24% of Your Pot Over Forty Years

How the calculation works