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Half is the controlling figure.
A 68-year-old weighing whether to pull half a 401(k) balance to fund a home purchase while carrying a mortgage is looking at a decision with three distinct moving parts: the scale of the distribution, the illiquidity of the asset it converts to, and the fixed obligation the mortgage layers on top of a retirement budget.
Retirement housing decisions come with a long checklist, and this particular configuration sits near the top of it. The ratio the withdrawal creates is the first problem to work through.
Whatever the total balance, half out means the remaining half absorbs every income, growth, and reserve function the whole balance was performing.
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