<prompt> Human: My husband has an old 401k from his previous job and we were thinking about rolling it over into an IRA. It has about 1,700 in it. However, this summer will be very tight for us because Im a pre-k teacher and I dont get paid during summers. I have found a summer job and we have some savings but Im worried it wont be enough. Id like to cash out the old 401k and put it in our savings account to get us through the summer just in case. How do we go about doing that? Are there any tax penalties that well have to worry about? Anything else thats important that we should know?  <response>: Cashing it out is generally a really bad idea. I would first look at tightening up your budget as a means to get through the summer and spend the next school year saving to cover the next summers months without an income. Roll it into an IRA. And if it really comes down to it and you need to cash it out, all of the same penalties will apply. Just know that if this is traditional pretax money, you will lose about 40 of it when you cash out. 