<prompt> Human: Heres our situation: husband and I got married in April, have around 10k in cc debt from the wedding which we make sizable payments on monthly to get it paid down. That sucks but its reality. Before we met, my husband bought a small house for 124k which is now worth around 135k and is where we currently live. Back in December of 2017 I bought a large house, 2700 sq ft for 110k to be our forever home. Its a beautiful historic, 3 story brick craftsman built in 1920, and going to be amazing but needs a lot of work. New electrical, plumbing, windows etc. We need probably around 20k to get things started, maybe more. Hub wants to borrow against his 401k for the money for this renovation. Hes stopped contributing to it last year he feels that money serves us better now instead of when hes 65 so its sitting at 59k and not growing. I still continue to contribute to mine, and our company matches contributions up to 6 so I feel like its worth it to keep adding to it. Were paying 2 1000 mortgages right now which we can afford, but I cant help feeling like were throwing money down the drain, because new house is just sitting there empty. For the past 6 months our jobs have been in limbo, as the company we work for was bought by a larger one and we werent sure if they were going to keep our jobs. Yesterday we found out that were in the clear, so now that we know well be employed for the foreseeable future, Im eager to get this house ready to move into. Whats the best way to get the 20k for renovation? The new house is in such bad shape that it isnt really livable until we at least get shower and toilet installed, not to mention appliances. Also, we just found out Im pregnant, due around mid March so yaaay but also yikes!Should I take out a personal renovation loan from somewhere like Sofi? Or maybe see if the credit union I belong to has a good loan rate? Or go with my husbands plan of borrowing against 401k? Or should we get a HELOC on hubs small house to pay for the renovations? Maybe a combination of these? Whats the smartest move here?Any advice would be so helpful!  <response>: You guys are in a place right now where you could really set yourselves up well financially, or start to set yourselves really far back.If I were in your position, I would find a way to narrow down to one home without incurring additional costs, build a true emergency fund, aggressively pay off debt, and then move forward with whatever you want to do through saving the cash for it.Also, retirement savings is incredibly important. It is the difference between having a comfortable, happy retirement as husband and wife - or the both of you working until death. 