<prompt> Human: First and foremost thanks very much for the assistance here. Secondly, Ive checked the subreddits history and sidebar to see if there was any mention of my specific question so as to not be redundant and was unable to find results. My apologies if Ive missed it.Im currently in a bit of a bind financially, I had a pretty rough year so far. I got laid off from two different jobs with two different start-ups and went through a nasty break-up with someone really special to me. As a result, I went sort of overboard on a self-destruction spree and spent a ton of money on my credit cards and from my savings. Before this, I had proper utilization and paid everything on time, was very sound financially and had built up my emergency fund.Today, Ive got some money back in savings, and a great job that has promises of job security. However, my emergency fund is empty and my cards are maxed out. Whats more, my student loans are coming out of deferment because of my unemployment and I have nothing saved to prepare for taxes. Also, my credit score took a major hit from the dark times I was in and now I am living paycheck to paycheck trying to make ends meet and somehow build a better financial future.Also, Im in my late 30s and a single father with goals of buying a house and hopefully building a family for my daughter - Id like to accomplish this in much less than 5 years if possible.On to the 401k aspect of this question. I used to work for a large company where I was able to build up this account; the two start-ups I left had no 401k and so I had no contributions to it in over 2 years now. My current company has a 401k and I have the option of rolling into the new account that my company has setup for me.Given my current state and my goals, I want to know if it makes sense to withdraw from my account to pay off my cards which will help me with my score. My other option is to roll that into the new account and try to find a better solution.If it makes a difference, my 401k has 23k saved up and my credit cards total roughly 17k. My savings is paltry but much better than 4 months ago at 800 saved up. Im in sales with 60k base and uncapped commission. Im still relatively new to sales but have been getting a lot better and am getting to a point where I could rely on a decent commission check. If Im being very conservative, Id say I can rely on an additional 8k-10k per year at my current skill level.Also, Ive been making some cutbacks out of necessity cutting the cord, switching phone providers, cutting back on eating out, its helped some but not enough.Any help is greatly appreciated.Edit: It blows me away that I come to this forum to get some insight into a question that I am not educated enough in to get assistance with and my post and replies get downvoted. Awesome to know that folks in this community downvote people looking for assistance with financial matters.  <response>: First and foremost, you dont have enough to pay off your credit card debt. You would be forced to pay your current tax rate on it, plus a 10 penalty. That means 35 of the money you take out vanishes. On 23k, that leaves you 15k. Additionally, making 60k plus uncapped commissions means you should really be able to pay off the cc debt in under 18 months if you really grind it out assuming you dont have a ton of other debt. 