Real Return Calculator

Strip inflation and taxes from your nominal return to see what your portfolio actually earns in purchasing power.

Nominal Annual Return 8.0%

Inflation Rate 3.0%

Tax Drag (dividends + realized gains) 15%

Expense Ratio (fund fees) 0.10%

What Your Return Actually Earns

Nominal Return8.00%

− Expense Ratio−0.10%

− Tax Drag (on gains)−1.19%

− Inflation−3.00%

= Real After-Tax Return3.71%

$100K grows to (nominal)

—

$100K grows to (real, after-tax)

—

$100,000 Over 30 Years — Nominal vs. Real After-Tax

The gap between what you see on your statement and what you actually earn is — per year. Over 30 years, inflation and taxes quietly erase serious money.

Real Return Calculator

The Real Return Calculator pulls back the curtain on what your portfolio actually earns after the three invisible taxes chip away at your headline number: fund fees, tax drag on dividends and realized gains, and inflation. Users dial in their nominal return, inflation rate, effective tax rate, and expense ratio, and the calculator runs a waterfall breakdown that subtracts each drag line by line, landing on the true real after-tax return. A side-by-side comparison then shows what $100,000 grows to over 30 years under both the nominal and the real scenarios, making the gap between the brochure number and reality impossible to ignore. The chart plots both growth curves on the same axes so users can see the divergence widen year after year. It is the calculator that turns "my fund returned 8%" into the honest question every long-term investor should be asking: yes, but after everything, what did I actually keep?