It's the best question a client can ask, and most of the industry hopes you never ask it. This tool answers it in both directions: what a fee really compounds into over 30 years (including the number most advisors won't say out loud), and what real planning, behavioral coaching, and tax coordination give back. Value per unit of fee, not fee alone. This calculator runs both sides of that math, honestly. Some people get told to keep their money.
A simple example. $1M portfolio, 30-year horizon, 8% pre-fee return.
That $2.5M is the compounded effect of giving up 1% per year for 30 years. It's not 1% × 30 = 30%. It's roughly 25% of the ending value — because every dollar of fee you pay is a dollar that doesn't compound with the rest.
It's stealing food from your best horse. The fee comes out of the portion of your money that's working the hardest for you.
Now — that doesn't automatically mean an advisor isn't worth it. Vanguard's Advisor's Alpha research pegs a good advisor's total value-add at about 3% per year net, with behavioral coaching the single biggest piece — more than enough to justify a 1% fee. And in the same dollars as the example above: an advisor who actually delivers turns that $1M into roughly $17.4M — about $7.4M more than going it alone, or three times what the fee cost. Same units, fair fight. Coordinated tax planning, asset location, withdrawal sequencing, and rebalancing add more. The question isn't whether the fee is expensive. It's whether you're getting that value back. Value shows up in three buckets: the part you can see (net returns after fees), the part that's real but invisible (behavior, tax, coordination), and the part you can't price until you need it (the costly mistake that never happens). Price the fee against all three, not just the first.
Test the fee both ways. A flat fee on a sizable portfolio costs far less than 1%. That's how StandUP charges. The honest comparison shows you both.
Illustration only — not investment advice. Assumes a constant 7% nominal return before drag. The "Going Alone" figure combines a behavior cost (panic-selling — you set its severity and frequency above; repeat events are modeled at declining cost as experience builds, and the total is capped so it can never exceed a realistic share of your no-mistakes outcome) with ongoing return drags drawn from your answers: portfolio construction and concentration, tax inefficiency, missed tax-advantaged space, inconsistent rebalancing, withdrawal sequencing, and performance chasing. "Fee Drag, Compounded" is the fee plus the growth that fee money would otherwise have earned — it is how much lower your balance ends up, not a sum the advisor collects. An advisor is worth paying only if they close more of the first number than they add to the second. Excludes taxes on withdrawals, Social Security, and sequence-of-returns risk.
You probably benefit from an advisor if: you have complex tax situations (entity income, equity comp, multiple states), you've made emotional investing decisions in the past (sold during a downturn, chased a hot sector), your situation involves coordination across taxes/estate/insurance, or you simply don't want to think about money and would rather pay someone you trust to handle it.
You probably don't if: your situation is simple (W-2 income, 401(k), maybe an IRA), you have the discipline to stay invested through downturns, you enjoy the work, and you're paying expense ratios under 0.20% in broad index funds.
If the calculator tells you you don't need one, that's a useful answer too.
Set your portfolio and the napkin writes itself: what a 1% fee compounds into over 30 years, and the question that decides whether it's worth paying. Download it, share it, tape it to the fridge.