Fee calculator: old plan, new plan and IRA, side by side

Name: Fee calculator: old plan, new plan and IRA, side by side
Author: Kaz

A percentage charge is taken on the whole balance every year, including on the growth that last year's charge already removed. A flat administration fee is taken on top and never appears in the percentage. This runs both, for three accounts at once.

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Currency

$ USD £ GBP

The account

Balance today

Added each year

Years until you draw on it

Assumed gross return, % a year

Option 1 — keep it in the old plan

All-in annual fee, %

Flat annual administration fee

Option 2 — move it to a new workplace plan

All-in annual fee, %

Flat annual administration fee

Option 3 — roll it to an IRA

All-in annual fee, %

Flat annual administration fee

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The gap, every five years

What to do with this number

The gap comes entirely from the fee fields, so it is only as good as the fees you typed. To swap a guess for a published figure, ten brokers' managed-account and exit fees sit in one table, and how a 0.75-point fee gap compounds over 25 years shows the arithmetic in full.

If you would rather have someone else handle the rollover paperwork, Capitalize's free rollover service is one option; it is paid by the IRA providers on its platform, not by you.

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The arithmetic behind this, and the Department of Labor's own version of it, is in how a 0.75-point difference in annual fees compounds over 25 years. Which of the three options the rules leave open is in the four-option comparison, and where the rest of the money goes is in where the money actually goes.

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What this does and does not do

Each year it adds your contribution, multiplies the balance by (1 + gross return − annual fee), and then deducts the flat annual fee. It runs the same assumptions across three columns so the only difference between them is what you typed into the fee fields.

It assumes a constant rate of return, which no investment has. It is an illustration, not a forecast, not a quotation and not a projection prepared to any regulatory standard. No provider guarantees any return, and nothing here says which of the three options you should choose.

The currency buttons change the symbol, not the figures. Figures are rounded to the nearest 100. Nothing you type is sent anywhere or seen by the publisher: the inputs are written into the part of the address after the #, which browsers do not send to a server, and a saved comparison is stored in this browser only. When a saved comparison is a year old, this page says so on opening and offers to run it again.