Fee drag projection

This tool shows fee drag: how a small difference in yearly fees compounds over a long time. It does not know your fund's fees, so you run it twice.

How to use it

1. Enter your starting balance, the monthly amount that reaches your account after the 15% contributions tax, and the years ahead.
2. Enter an assumed return after fees and fund taxes, such as 6% a year, and note the projected balance.
3. Lower the return by the fee difference between two products, for example 0.5 percentage points (6% → 5.5%), and run it again.
4. The gap between the two projected balances is the illustrative cost of the higher fee.

Formula: the balance grows monthly at the annual rate ÷ 12, and each month's contribution is added at the end of the month. No further tax is applied because the return you enter is already after fund taxes.

Illustrative example: $50,000 to start, $680 a month for 30 years. At 6% the projection is about $984,000; at 5.5% about $881,000. A 0.5 point fee gap costs roughly $104,000 in this example. These are not forecasts: real returns vary each year and can be negative.

Limits: amounts are in future dollars (not adjusted for inflation), contributions are assumed constant, and insurance premiums and flat fees are not modelled separately. For real fee and return data use the YourSuper comparison tool. This is general information, not financial advice.