Financial Advisor Fee Calculator — The Fee Translator (your 1% in dollars)

Portfolio value ($)

Advisory fee (% per year)

The quoted number — commonly around 1%.

Fund & platform costs (% per year)

Expense ratios + platform/trading. Often 0.3–1.0% on advised portfolios.

Years

Assumed gross return (% per year)

Before any fees. 7% is a common long-run planning assumption.

Flat-fee comparison ($ per year)

An example figure, not a benchmark — flat-fee advisors quote their own. Edit it to a real quote.

Your all-in cost this year

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Advisory fee plus fund costs, in dollars, whether the market goes up or down.

Forgone wealth over your horizon — vs. a 0.10% do-it-yourself baseline

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The gap between your balance compounding at the net return and the same money at a low-cost index baseline. Money paid in fees never compounds again.

The same money with a flat-fee advisor instead

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A flat annual dollar fee prices the work instead of taking a share of the pile. Why the fee’s shape matters →

The translation

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Now get the Method — free

What to do with the number

Now that it’s in dollars, treat it like dollars

You would not pay a $10,000 invoice every year without asking what it buys. The only reason this number gets a pass is that it never arrives as an invoice — it’s deducted quietly, upstream, before you see anything.

So ask what it buys, in writing. Question 3 gets you the real all-in figure for your own accounts — advisory fee, expense ratios, platform and trading costs, in dollars. Question 11 gets you the benchmark that tells you whether the fee is earning its keep. And if the number deserves negotiating — most do — here is how institutions do it.

The question to ask — in writing

“What will I pay, all-in, in dollars per year — your fee, the funds’ expense ratios, platform and trading costs? And what, specifically, does that amount buy me?”

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