Why 401(k) loans are a bad idea
You forgo potential investment gains when you borrow from your nest egg.
Dear Liz: You have warned about the risks of a 401(k) loan. In the last 14 years, my average return has been between 2% and 3%. I am considered moderately aggressive in my choices of international (24%), large and small cap (52%), midcap (16%) and bonds (8%).
It has been an absolute joke (until last quarter) so I took out a loan a few years ago and was planning on doing it again when the first is repaid in approximately two years. I look at it as a 5% return to make myself a little something in an unstable and nasty market. I see the loan as my best consistent return option. Answer: There is something wrong with your portfolio if your average annual return has been that low — and if you think paying returns out of your own pocket is a better option than putting your money to work in the markets.
If you had invested in a plain vanilla balanced fund 15 years ago, with 60% of its portfolio in stocks and 40% in bonds, your annual return would have averaged over 9% (and it would be up 10% in the last year alone). While you wouldn’t have achieved 9% every year, and your returns would vary based on when you bought your shares, your portfolio should have done better than it has.
It’s possible your plan charges higher-than-average fees or your investment choices have higher-thanaverage expenses.
A site called FeeX will evaluate your 401(k) portfolio for free and show you how its costs stack up against other plans. You may be able to move to less-expensive options within your plan or press your company to look for lower-cost providers.
The loan you took out depressed your returns as well. That money was pulled out of your investments, so it wasn’t able to grow with the market. The 5% interest rate you’re paying may seem cheap, but it’s a bad deal when compared to the returns the money could have been earning.
New credit scoring formulas help some
Dear Liz: I read that the credit bureaus have started deleting black marks from people’s credit reports. This is good news for me. I have never been late on a house payment in 30-plus years, but my credit is in the low 600s because I co-signed a loan for an ex-girlfriend who has been chronically late.
Answer: The records the credit bureaus are deleting won’t help improve your scores.
The three bureaus — Equifax, Experian and TransUnion — are removing virtually all civil court judgments and many tax liens from credit reports. Tax liens result from unpaid state or federal tax bills and civil judgments are court rulings from lawsuits filed over old debts, unpaid child support, evictions and other noncriminal disputes.
Judgments and liens caused a lot of disputes and complaints about accuracy because the records were often missing key identifying information and weren’t regularly updated. The bureaus are removing the records that don’t include minimum identifying information such as Social Security numbers or dates of birth in addition to names and addresses. The records must also have been updated within the previous 90 days.
The deleted records are expected to lead to small credit score increases for most of the 12 million to 14 million people who have such black marks on their credit reports.
Your issue is different. Because you co-signed, the loan appears on your credit reports as well as your ex’s. Every late payment hurts your credit scores. If your ex had simply stopped paying, your scores would have plunged even more — but then would have begun to improve as your responsible use of credit began to offset the default.
After seven years and 180 days, the defaulted loan would no longer show up on your credit reports or affect your scores. Because your ex keeps paying, albeit late, your credit scores sustain fresh damage each time. Each late payment also resets the clock on how long the negative marks show up on your credit reports. You won’t begin to get relief until the loan is paid off or refinanced.