<prompt> Human: Im not looking for relationship advice so please dont comment on anything other than the legalfinancial aspects of this question... Im 30yrs old and currently have a rather substantial 401k with my employer. I was lucky enough to have a situation in which my parents were able to pay for my education. My wife, however, was not as fortunate. She is in a lot of student loan debt right now about 80k. She has a 6figure salary at her current job makes more money than I do, but she hasnt been able to save much at all. She pretty much just pays her student loan interest every month and is very slowly chipping away at her loans but at the rate shes going it will take her like 20 years to pay it off. In the mean time we are at a crucial point in our lives. Trying to save for a house, a car, thinking about having kids, etc. but literally more than half her paycheck goes to student loan interest every 2 weeks. If I was able to pay off her student loan debt using my 401k she would be able to rake in a lot more cash and all of it would be going straight to the bank rather than student loan interest.I havent even mentioned any of this to her, so this is purely my own idea, but what are the ramifications of doing something like this?  <response>: The numbers seem wrong here, 80k student loan debt should be about 800 per month. How is that half of her take-home in a six-figure income job? Using your 401k for this is a bad idea. You have a couple of options, one sorta bad, and the other really bad. 