One percent is the fee equivalent of a rounding error. It's the difference between 1.5% and 2.5%. It's a figure nobody argues over in a meeting. And yet, compounded over thirty years of retirement saving, it is one of the single largest financial decisions most people will ever unknowingly make.
A worked example.
Imagine you save R5,000 a month for thirty years into a balanced fund earning 9% a year, before fees. After fees of 1.5%, you retire with roughly R7.4 million. After fees of 2.5%, you retire with roughly R6.1 million. Same saving discipline. Same market. One percent difference in fee. Over a million rand gone.
Stretch the example to forty years and the gap widens further, because compounding keeps working harder over time. That's the whole point: small fee differences, applied over long horizons, produce outcomes that do not feel like small differences.
What to do with this.
You don't need to chase the absolute cheapest fund. Some funds earn their fee. You do need to know what you're paying in total, and to test, every few years, whether you could get the same outcome for less. The 1% that sounds like nothing is usually the biggest lever on your retirement you actually control.