"401(k) or ATM? Automated retirement savings prove easy to pluck prematurely"

https://www.businessreport.com/article/401k-atm-automated-retirement-savings-prove-easy-pluck-prematurely

"Within eight years of joining a 401(k) plan, the results indicate that automatically enrolled workers withdraw nearly half of the extra they manage to save, compared with workers left to sign up for the retirement plan on their own.

As the Wall Street Journal reports, the findings illustrate how difficult it can be to change savings and spending habits. And this tapping or pocketing of retirement funds early, a phenomenon known in the industry as leakage, threatens to reduce the wealth in U.S. retirement accounts by about 25% when the lost annual savings are compounded over 30 years, according to a separate analysis by economists at Boston College’s Center for Retirement Research."

401k is not a convenient bank account for you to borrow from, damn it.

The only way a borrow becomes a withdrawal. Is if it you lose your job and are not savvy enough to generate at worst 50k to pay off loan. Borrowing to invest is not necessarily a bad thing!

with that said withdrawals from 401k are retarded. Because you are adding your withdrawal to your income, so the tax will be a lot worse! But many 401k participants including my parents have done this before I started coming up with creative ways to generate money for them. Consider a 50k withdrawal. You’d prolly only receive 30k if not less. That’s a 67% interest versus borrowing 30k from a 401k at a 3% after tax interest for the entire 6 years of loan or whatever, should really be 0 but since you pay after tax dollars the interest goes up to 1% per year and goes down as the balance is paid.