I had to do this once. Had car issues due to running over a crowbar that somehow bounced up and hit my car. I heard and felt the impact, saw smoke in my rear view mirror, and immediately pulled off the highway into a parking lot. I got out and a soon as I turned the car off all of the oil poured out. The oil pan got ripped, and later found out the engine got damaged.
Mechanic and insurance both decided it was least expensive to spend $9k parts and labor to replace the engine rather than total the car. I had to pay $3,000 for the deductible. Being young, renting, and making $11/hr, I didn’t have that kind of savings. I did have the money in my 401k.
My 401k allowed me to take a loan out against my 401k. It would get deducted out of my paycheck each week until it was paid off. The advantage to this was there was no interest, but I did have to pay a 10% penalty for early withdrawal, so I ended up having to take out more than $3k to cover the penalty.
Only other catch was if I quit or were fired before repaying the full amount the remainder of the balance was due the next month - and I was close to quitting to change careers. A few months later got a much better job in IT but could not repay the loan amount, so I “defaulted” on it which isn’t as bad as it sounds. The loan amount just gets reported to the IRS as income, and I had to pay taxes on the full amount in addition to the penalty.
Not ideal at all, but being young-ish and only having the option to try and get a loan from a traditional lender at a much higher interest rate would have been worse.
I had to do this once. Had car issues due to running over a crowbar that somehow bounced up and hit my car. I heard and felt the impact, saw smoke in my rear view mirror, and immediately pulled off the highway into a parking lot. I got out and a soon as I turned the car off all of the oil poured out. The oil pan got ripped, and later found out the engine got damaged.
Mechanic and insurance both decided it was least expensive to spend $9k parts and labor to replace the engine rather than total the car. I had to pay $3,000 for the deductible. Being young, renting, and making $11/hr, I didn’t have that kind of savings. I did have the money in my 401k.
My 401k allowed me to take a loan out against my 401k. It would get deducted out of my paycheck each week until it was paid off. The advantage to this was there was no interest, but I did have to pay a 10% penalty for early withdrawal, so I ended up having to take out more than $3k to cover the penalty.
Only other catch was if I quit or were fired before repaying the full amount the remainder of the balance was due the next month - and I was close to quitting to change careers. A few months later got a much better job in IT but could not repay the loan amount, so I “defaulted” on it which isn’t as bad as it sounds. The loan amount just gets reported to the IRS as income, and I had to pay taxes on the full amount in addition to the penalty.
Not ideal at all, but being young-ish and only having the option to try and get a loan from a traditional lender at a much higher interest rate would have been worse.