# Cash Drag Calculator: What Cash Costs a Portfolio

> Holding 20% in cash for 10 years would leave $10,000 about $6,013 behind, at the S&P 500’s and cash’s last ten-year averages.

Data as of Oct 27, 2026. Rebuilt every trading night.

Data as of Oct 27, 2026. Rebuilt every trading night.

## Cash drag calculator

what holding cash cost over ten years

At the last ten years’ averages, holding 20% in cash for 10 years would leave $10,000 about $6,013 behind fully invested: the S&P 500 returned 15.6% a year and cash 2.3%, to Oct 27, 2026.

Past averages are not a forecast.

S&P 500 and cash total returns over the ten years to Oct 27, 2026, computed by ETFIQ from SPY and BIL.

### Questions people ask

Where do the averages come from? SPY ’s and BIL ’s total returns over the ten years from Oct 28, 2016 to Oct 27, 2026, with every payout reinvested, as a yearly rate. BIL holds 1 to 3 month Treasury bills. Is cash ever the better choice? Over a single bad year, yes. Over ten years stocks have usually beaten cash, and this shows by how much on the last ten.

### Where to next

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Source: ETFIQ, independent ETF data. Recomputed nightly from public filings and prices.
Cite: ETFIQ, Cash drag calculator, data as of Oct 27, 2026. https://etfiq.com/portfolio/cash/
Licence: https://etfiq.com/license/ Data ETFIQ computes is free to use with attribution: ETFIQ (etfiq.com). Issuer data stays under its owner's terms.
HTML: https://etfiq.com/portfolio/cash/