Investment performance is only the starting point. Advisor fees, fund expenses and taxes in a taxable account can each reduce the amount left working for you.
Project your retirement runway, translate the result into today's dollars, compare your spending target and see how annual investment costs can change the modeled outcome.
Use each tool separately, or use the tax result as an input in the advisor-cost model.
Model the long-term effect of advisory fees, fund expenses, withdrawals, dividends and a tax-drag assumption.
Existing account? Use Quick or Detailed mode. New inheritance or lump sum? Use Planning a New Investment to model hypothetical taxable activity before you have a 1099.
What you pay for financial planning, investment management and other adviser services. Value can include more than investment performance, so cost should be weighed against services received.
The fund's own operating expenses. Published total returns generally already reflect these fund-level expenses, so they should not be subtracted a second time from historical total-return data.
Learn what a good expense ratio means →Taxes generated by dividends, interest, realized gains and fund distributions can remove money from a taxable account's compounding engine.
Learn why tax bills happen →Taxable brokerage, traditional retirement and Roth retirement accounts have different tax treatment. Start here before judging an investment's tax efficiency.
Higher turnover means more trading inside a fund and may create more taxable consequences when held in a taxable account.
Many ETFs can distribute fewer capital gains than mutual funds because of in-kind exchange mechanics, but ETFs are not tax-free.
Look at the capital-gain distributions and dividends that actually appeared on your tax documents rather than relying only on a label such as “active,” “passive,” or “ETF.”
If a taxable investment account surprised you at tax time, enter the actual 1099-DIV figures first.