Data from Vanguard shows Americans are pulling money out of their retirement accounts early at record rates to help make ends meet.
Last year, 6% of Vanguard’s clients took a hardship withdrawal, which allows them to access funds in tax-advantaged retirement accounts, such as a 401(k), before they reach retirement age. That was up from 4.8% in 2024, the asset management giant said.
Taking a hardship withdrawal is not ideal for a few reasons, one of them being that investors are subject to a withdrawal penalty of 10% for taking money out of their account before 59½. On top of that, they are then taxed on any gains. However, perhaps most importantly, they rob themselves of future growth potential on that money, especially if they are still far from retirement age.
I had to do this once. Had car issues due to running over a crowbar that somehow bounced up and hit my car. I heard and felt the impact, saw smoke in my rear view mirror, and immediately pulled off the highway into a parking lot. I got out and a soon as I turned the car off all of the oil poured out. The oil pan got ripped, and later found out the engine got damaged.
Mechanic and insurance both decided it was least expensive to spend $9k parts and labor to replace the engine rather than total the car. I had to pay $3,000 for the deductible. Being young, renting, and making $11/hr, I didn’t have that kind of savings. I did have the money in my 401k.
My 401k allowed me to take a loan out against my 401k. It would get deducted out of my paycheck each week until it was paid off. The advantage to this was there was no interest, but I did have to pay a 10% penalty for early withdrawal, so I ended up having to take out more than $3k to cover the penalty.
Only other catch was if I quit or were fired before repaying the full amount the remainder of the balance was due the next month - and I was close to quitting to change careers. A few months later got a much better job in IT but could not repay the loan amount, so I “defaulted” on it which isn’t as bad as it sounds. The loan amount just gets reported to the IRS as income, and I had to pay taxes on the full amount in addition to the penalty.
Not ideal at all, but being young-ish and only having the option to try and get a loan from a traditional lender at a much higher interest rate would have been worse.
Before Trump finds a way to siphon them dry no doubt. Also,people are out of work and under paid
I remember my dad emptying his retirement savings in the wake of '08. Super fun to be experiencing all this again. Troops in the middle east for extra nostalgia.
Gosh, damn. Exact same story here too. If we could just go back and tell them, right?
My dad was upset and panicked “Every time Obama opens his mouth we’ve lost more money!”
I didn’t get how any of this worked back then. I still don’t completely but I was just a kid. I wish I could have just convinced him to chill and wait it out. (And I knew enough to tell him to turn off the “24/7 screaming heads channel” but was unsuccessful…)
The upheaval that followed was not a positive life experience…
So freaking sad reliving all of this again and seeing people either haven’t learned to not panic-pull or are just that terribly desperate.
Weirdly, with my meager means, I’m trying to figure out where to put money in… y’know just in case this thing starts working again like it’s turned around in the past…
It’s not ideal, but keeping food on the table, a roof over your head, and light/heat running are going to be bigger priorities than worrying about a tomorrow that might not come, anyway.
Yeah, the real dystopian truth is that people who are able to pull from a retirement account as a stop-gap are in a much more fortunate position than countless peers who live paycheck-to-paycheck and haven’t been able to squirrel anything significant away.
This is exactly my mindset these days. I never managed to get ahead, hell i barely ever managed to catch up. I’ve been paranoid in the past about my inability to put aside any savings, but now i don’t even think it matters. In the end, the healthcare industry will ultimately take all of my money–there’s no way i can afford treatment for even minor problems, much less the big stuff that lies in wait for us when we get older. So why bother trying to create a savings–just to have them take it all away? So i can squeak a couple more years of life, penniless after having battled cancer? Fuck that.
Boomers traded stable pension funds (minus the occasional embezzlement scandal here and there) for funding your retirement based on gambling in the stock market…
My parents are getting rekt right now…
You will own nothing. You won’t even be happy. You just own nothing.
Buy the dip?
I’d like to get back to contributing, but I’m getting close to 12 months unemployed. :(
almost 2 years over here. As much as I hate what such a stupid thing it would be I am hoping trump will try to termporarily improve the economy by allow people to take money out after age 50. Lots of folks will be on social security with no savings in a few years. After he is gone of course. OMS at least I hope he will be gone.
Must be fake news. Trump himself said usa does better than ever. Prices down, afordability up, gas almost free, more jobs, more profit, all
warsspecial ops won in a day and foreign countries pay for all that via tariffs /s“They’re begging to make a deal, we can go wherever we want”
I feel like he’s talking to the American people, telling us we better drop the Epstein shit or he’ll invade more countries and thereby ruin ours even harder
I thought it’s because they don’t trust the money to be there anymore in a few years (or be worth nothing), but apparently it’s mostly because of economical struggle.
Really sucks for them because the market has been fucked to hell by trump and his anti-Epstein-attention event
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