<prompt> Human: I know touching a 401K is basically a horrible thing to do, but If we do so, then we can pay off all of our debt aside from the house and still leave a decent amount in there. The wife also has a decent income and a 401K, but her pay isnt enough to cover our bad debt decisions of the past. I know we can scrape together and live off of her income, but we are looking at a long time to pay off the debt assuming I am not employed again. Not a good assumption per se, but it has been 4 months already.Numbers: I currently have 305k in my 401k. She has 350k or so. We are 100k in debt not counting the house and car 100k. We have 6 credit cards with balances on them, a lot loan future place to build our forever home mostly paid off, and 2 loans to fix past mistakes one big one not so big. These come up to 2200 a month in payments. If I pull out a little more than half my 401K I can get rid of these payments and make it so we are in a pretty good place. Little to no stress, no real changes in lifestyle aside from reduced entertainment budget. I know it will affect our retirement, but I think I can fix it if I get a good job back. Really I am just trying to figure out if there is a better short-term solution as the scraping by options can end up screwing us over in some ways should I get a job in the next month or so...  <response>: You will have to pay 10 penalty on the distribution PLUS federal and possible State income taxes. So more than 30 just in penalties and taxes 