The penalties for making an emergency withdrawal from your 401k are pretty steep but Woodlands Congressman Kevin Brady has a bill that would allow hurricane victims to do just that without paying such a steep price.
Bankrate's Greg McBride told Fox news unless the rules are changed, you shouldn't dip into retirement to pay for Hurricane Harvey expenses.
"The hardship withdrawal, you're subject to income taxes and if you're under age 59 and a half, a 10% early withdrawal penalty, so if you're in the 25% federal tax bracket, right there, you're only getting 65 cents on every dollar you pull out."
McBride says, as the rules are currently written, you'll ruin your retirement if you pull that money out of your 401k.
"You can't ignore long term it's a permanent setback to your retirement planning; whatever dollars you work to put back in to replace that loan, you're putting old money back into the plan, you're not putting new dollars in so you're never gonna get back to where you otherwise would have been."
Congressman Brady says he's writing a bill to ease the penalties on hurricane victims who want to use 401k funds, but he wasn't specific.