The 401k loan everyone warned me about actually saved my house in Portland

I know the standard advice is never touch your retirement, but I took a $9,000 loan from my 401k last March to cover a roof replacement after a storm. Everyone on Reddit said I was insane. But the interest goes back to my own account, not a bank, and I set the payments to auto-deduct. It cost me maybe $300 in lost growth over 8 months, versus the 11% credit card rate I would have paid. Has anyone else used a 401k loan as a bridge and actually come out ahead?

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robert_craig4d ago

Wait, you said it cost you $300 in lost growth over 8 months. How did you even calculate that? Because when I looked into a 401k loan a few years back, I got so lost trying to figure out if the interest I was paying myself was actually making up for the market gains I was missing. Did you just compare your account balance to what a similar investment would have done, or did you use some kind of online calculator?