This is the math that convinced me to move from actively managed funds to index funds.

A $100,000 investment with a 1% expense ratio vs a 0.03% expense ratio over 30 years at 7% annual growth:

• 0.03% fund: approximately $747,000
• 1% fund: approximately $574,000

That's a $173,000 difference — nearly double the initial investment lost to fees. And that's assuming the actively managed fund performs identically to the index fund before fees, which historically it doesn't.

This is why the financial services industry is so profitable and why index funds are the best thing to happen to retail investors in the last 50 years. The fee math is simply brutal over long time horizons.