A fee is not a one-off subtraction; it removes capital that would otherwise have compounded. At an 8% gross return over 30 years, each 0.5% of annual cost removes roughly 13% of final wealth, and the proportion grows with the horizon.
Worked example on $200,000 over 25 years at 7% gross: at 0.15% total cost the ending balance is about $1,047,000; at 1.15% it is about $833,000. The $214,000 gap is the fee and the growth the fee never earned.
Fees are the one input an investor controls with certainty, unlike returns. That asymmetry is the core argument for treating cost as the first screen rather than the last. See total-expense-ratio and wrap-fee.
Related: total-expense-ratio, wrap-fee, management-fee, index-fund, cagr, no-load-fund