Submitted by dumbquestions4reddit t3_10ttyp3 in personalfinance
Expenses in my household have gotten out of control, and I feel like my only recourse is to withdraw from my 403(b).
Details: My wife and I are in our mid 40s and have been married ten years. We bought our first house in 2016 for $239K. It has since nearly doubled in value just with how the PNW housing market is. We refinanced a few years later and thank goodness we locked in a 1.9% rate. We didn’t take anything out against the house at that time, though we knew we wanted it make improvements. A bad roof leak a few years ago accelerated those plans, and mercifully we got some family money to cover the work needed on the exterior of the house. But we needed to take out a HELOC last year for about $100K for interior work, which is nearly done, but the project has gone way over budget. Meanwhile other stuff has popped up - car repairs, life and car insurance bills, medical beyond what insurance pays, stuff for our one child - and we’ve been charging it against various cards. I thought we were sitting on about $25K in CC debt but last weekend my wife tallied it up and says it’s more than double that. Together we make about $225K but between childcare, groceries, etc etc, there’s just nothing left at the end of the month. And now with the prospect of needing a lifetime to pay back these credit cards, I am thinking I need to bite the bullet and withdraw against my retirement plan. I have a little over $100K in it, and my wife has about double that. We have no savings. I went with a HELOC because I don’t want to refi again and lose what I am sure is a once-in-a-lifetime interest rate. To me the ship has sailed on “how the hell did we get in this place?” Can someone assure me that it’s to withdraw the money (and plan for a big tax bill) and pledge never to get in this hole again?