Wealth Vampire
The silent fee drag that sucks years of your life out of your portfolio before you even notice it's gone.
All figures are in today's money: every rate on this page is real, i.e. above inflation. Why?
Parameters
| Metric | ETF (low cost) | Active Fund | Advantage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Final Balance ETF net of 0.2%/yr · Active net of 1.5%/yr fee | €597,696 | €455,014 | €142,683 |
| Years of Life Stolen extra contribution years to catch up | – | – | 6.0 |
What each fund leaves you with
Where your pot after 30 years lands: the low-cost ETF in the upper panel, the active fund in the lower one. Both panels use exactly the same buckets, x axis and y axis, so a bar compares directly with the bar below it. Both funds ride the same market in any one scenario, so the active fund ends below the ETF every time; the histogram below shows by how much.
- Upper panel (ETF (low cost)): The share of scenarios in which etf (low cost) finishes in each range.
- Lower panel (Active fund): The share of the same scenarios in which active fund finishes in each range. Both panels use exactly the same buckets, x axis and y axis, so a bar here compares directly with the bar above it.
- point at the chart: Hovering or tapping anywhere on the chart names the bucket under the pointer and, for each side, the share of scenarios that finish inside it, below it and above it (the three add to 100%). Dragging across the chart with the mouse zooms to what you selected.
- clipped tail: The ‹ and › percentages at the ends of the axis are the scenarios finishing outside the drawn range, each after a ■ in its side's colour. Up to 1.0% of one side's scenarios sit outside it; they are counted in every number on this page, just not drawn here.
How much the fees drain
The gap between the two pots after 30 years, across the modelled market outcomes (σ = 15%, set in the header). The better the market, the bigger the pot the fee bites into, so the right tail is long.
- Bars: Wealth drained: The share of scenarios that finish in each range.
- clipped tail: 0.5% between €23.9k and €33.7k and 0.5% between €816.2k and €1.1M. They are counted, just not drawn.
Same capital, same monthly contributions, same gross market return. The only difference is the annual fee: ETF 0.2% vs active fund 1.5%.
ETF pot (low fee)
ETF(m) = ETF(m−1) · (1 + r − f_etf)^(1/12) + 500
- ETF(m): ETF pot balance after month m, ETF(0) = P_0
- r: gross market return, as a fraction = marketReturn/100
- f_etf: ETF annual fee, as a fraction = etfFee/100
- c: monthly contribution
Active fund pot (high fee)
Active(m) = Active(m−1) · (1 + r − f_active)^(1/12) + 500
- Active(m): active fund pot balance after month m, Active(0) = P_0
- r: gross market return, as a fraction = marketReturn/100
- f_active: active fund annual fee, as a fraction = activeFee/100
- c: monthly contribution
Wealth drained
- ETF(final): ETF pot at the horizon (see above)
- Active(final): active fund pot at the horizon (see above)
Years of Life Stolen translates Wealth Drained into labour: how many extra years you would have to keep contributing, staying in the active fund at its own net return, before it reaches the ETF's final balance.
How the scenarios work: each pot compounds at a lognormal return with median 5%/yr and volatility σ = 15% (set in the header); at σ = 0 both histograms collapse onto the deterministic values in the table. A higher fee is a guaranteed drag, so the higher-fee pot loses in every scenario. What varies is how much is drained: the fee bites a fixed slice of a pot that itself swings with the market, so a lucky bull run grows the base and drains more in absolute terms. The drain histogram is the ETF pot's own distribution scaled by the deterministic drag-to-ETF ratio, which is why its P90 sits far above its P10. Years of Life Stolen is not modelled as a distribution, since it depends on the pots' whole history, not just their final gap.
Assumptions behind every figure: how this site models the market →
Every model leaves things out. Here is what this one does not see:
- Fee percentages are held constant for the whole horizon. Whether the true drag ends up smaller or larger than modelled here depends on which force wins for that specific fund: index-fund fee competition has driven ETF expense ratios down for two decades (which would widen the real gap versus what's shown), while an active fund raising fees after gathering assets under management would widen it further still. Either way the fixed gap modelled here is a snapshot, not a lifetime average.
- Both pots are assumed to earn the identical gross return before fees, with no way to represent an active fund's manager actually beating the benchmark gross of fees, which is the industry's entire pitch. That understates the rare skilled/lucky manager's case, but the median real-world active fund trails its benchmark even before fees, so for most funds this is generous to the active side, not harsh.
- No tax treatment: capital-gains distributions from a higher-turnover active fund, and the tax-loss-harvesting or tax-efficiency edge of the ETF wrapper, are both absent. In most taxable accounts this would widen the ETF's real advantage beyond what is shown.
- Only the stated annual expense ratio is modelled: no entry/exit loads, redemption fees, transaction costs or bid/ask spread, all of which full-service active funds are more likely to carry. The true cost gap could therefore be wider than the drain figure shown.