Set the principal, a return rate, and adjust the fee to see how much of your wealth disappears before you ever touch it.
The number to watch is Total Wealth Lost — that's the fee plus everything it would have grown into over 25 years, had that money stayed invested in a low-cost index fund instead.
That's the real cost of a high-fee fund.
How to read this:
The green line is your index fund. Practically no fee, steady growth. This is the baseline.
The blue line is the High-Fee Managed Fund. Same market, but fees come out every year before you see a dollar.
The orange dotted line is what the managed fund would have grown into with no fees at all.
The gap between orange and blue is what the fee actually cost you, not just the cash that left your account, but everything that money would have compounded into over 25 years.
If the blue line ends above the green, the manager earned their fee. If it ends below, they didn't and you paid for it anyway.