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Asked 3/13/2008

Take a 401k Loan? In this bear market my money is not making money in compound interest?

Over the last 3 months my 401k lost over 7% interest. I currently have about 15-16k in there right now with a 5% contribution and also a company match. I can only borrow up to 7k from it. I have some student loans (about 14k) with 10% interest and 5.5% interest but I do not plan on consolidating these due to my debt payment plan being such a short amount of time. I would like to take the 7k loan to pay off the student loan with the 10% interest, and use the 24 month pay back schedule with my 401k rather than the 60 month. The deductions for payment plan come out of my bi-weekly check after taxes of course. But this will not be uncomfortable for me. In this type of situation wouldn't it be better to take this loan to pay off debts with interest? I would be paying back the 401k loan with 7-8% interest and actually would be able to pay it back within 12-24 months time.
I would like to add that I would be continuing to pay into my 401k up to my company match while I am paying back my loan.

 
 
 
 
 
 
Answers

Answer 1/6 - Submitted 3/13/2008

NO!

Never Sell Low.

Put more money into your 401K while the market is DOWN.

When it goes up, then put some in BEAR funds.

It is Buy low, Sell high!
Not Buy high, sell low!

Never take a 401K loan, A 401K is PRE-TAX Money, the interest you pay back into it, is AFTER-TAX money, so you are paying DOUBLE INCOME TAXES on it, once before you put it in, then again after you take it out when you retire. Also, if you quit or lose your job, the 401K loan is called, and you have to pay it all back right away.

 
 

Answer 2/6 - Submitted 3/13/2008

No do not take a loan EVER on your retirement account. What you can do is stop paying into it for about 2years or as long as it takes you to pay off your CC and loans and then start contributing again.

This will release some cash to put into debt and make a faster payment

 
 

Answer 3/6 - Submitted 3/13/2008

Nope. This would be a bad move. This is the time when you should try to pump as much money into the market as possible. You are thinking too much into the "short-term" for a retirement account. The market will bounce back like it has always done in the past. When it does you will be happy that you kept this money in your account.

 
 

Answer 4/6 - Submitted 3/13/2008

Taking money out of your 401k at this point would be foolish. If you sell now, you are selling at what is hopefully near or at the low point. You would be better off to continue dollar cost averaging into your 401k as you have been and try to refinance your student loans. How you got a student loan at 10% is beyond me. 5% even seems high for student loans.

Also, if you could pay off the loan on your 401k in 24 months, why don't you increase your payments to the 10% student loan.

 
 

Answer 5/6 - Submitted 3/13/2008

Your 401k isn't losing interest most likely, but principal.
Your plan has some merit, but, as long as the loan is outstanding, your 401k is not growning--no guarantee that it would be. Shorter rather than long term payback is excellent idea, shorter the better.
It's better that you take a loan rather than a withdrawal from retirement, but the best is NOT to do either. Could you instead of doing this, pay towards your 10% student loan the amount you usually contribute to the 401k? Just not contribute to the 401k, rather than taking loan, and making double/triple payments on student loans? Remember you are losing not only your contribution to the 401k, but also whatever matching money your employer puts in. Plus you are increasing your taxable income by not contributing, and may have some tax impact.

 
 

Answer 6/6 - Submitted 3/13/2008

few problems with this...

if the market turns while your loan is still outstanding you'll miss out on gains. But in reality since the market will likely go down before it goes up you won't miss out on too much and it should be offset by the the interest you are paying.

Difference between between 7% and 10% interest over a period of two years isn't that much. So you're not gaining a whole lot here and losses you'd incur if market were to immediately turn around and your 7k in principal weren't there would be larger than the interest gain here. Better to just figure out the payment you would be making on the 401k loan and simply apply that number to the student loan so that it's paid off in 2 years.

Student loan interest is deductible...you're trading a deductible interest for a non-deductible interest.

As others have said...you're selling at the low. Rather than paying a higher student payment to your 401k you should keep the deductible payment and simply increase your actual 401k contribution by the difference of the payments you would be making had you taken out the loan versus the student loan. That way you get the extra deduction AND your money is going in pre-tax rather than after tax (interest only - I know the principal payment is pre-tax).

I like the out of the box thinking here and would say that the logic would be ok if it weren't a student loan. Normally I don't advocate trading debt for debt but since you were willing to pay it off sooner than the original debt it does make some sense. It would make better sense if the market were on the initial downswing rather than near the bottom (ie 8 months ago).

 
 
 
 

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