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Comment by danielmarkbruce | Hacker News Reader

>> Over a 30-year period on a $500k portfolio, the money lost to those fees would be $1.30M for the financial advisor and $244k for the average ETF and even $42,951 for the low fee VOO.

How do you calculate $42,951 for VOO? Seems too high on 500k, or at very best you are conflating FV and PV and comparing apples to oranges.

First year is going to be $150. Last year is going to be maybe 2^3 * 500k * 0.03 = $1200? I'm sure you are then FVing all those but even then it seems like you must be assuming pretty high returns. If that's what you are doing, surely calculate the FV compared to the FV of the portfolio (like $4 million or so). Or, do the PV of the fees which is going to be... $4500 or something.

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The calculation is at https://double.finance/pricing

They are assuming an additional $2000 contributed per month and a 7% return.

Handy calculator. Comparing to VTSAX (.04% expense ratio), they show a 1% difference. Not nothing, but hard to justify switching when you consider the downside risk of this company going out of business or selling in the next 30 years.

I think this is going to be a hard product to sell when your target market is exactly the sort of people who are well-informed enough to just buy vanguard mutual funds for a nearly identical result.

Not to sound like a total hater but I'm always so surprised that VCs are willing to invest in these companies that just seem obviously flawed based on common sense. Similar to that web browser startup Mighty.

If you're a pure boglehead, sure - but if you want "index but" + tax harvesting, this seems good, no?

100%.

The risk of them going out of business, fraud, changing strategy, being bought, vanguard fees going down even more, etc - it's not even close to being a sensible decision to move for what amounts to significantly less than 1% at the end.

So, future value of fees against PV of portfolio, then with an additional $24k added every year for 30 years...

It's going to be difficult for them if right out of the gate they fudge numbers every time they talk about their company.

Is it that difficult to just shoot straight?

I've added that to the text above. Thanks!

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