Listen to those here saying to NOT cash it out. I speak from experience. I kept my startup afloat for almost a year by using up all my 401K savings. I was in

Listen to those here saying to NOT cash it out. I speak from experience. I kept my startup afloat for almost a year by using up all my 401K savings. I was in my mid-30s, and in that moment the worry of losing momentum on the startup was so strong that I calculated the risk with a strong bias. To make a long story short, the startup fizzled and I found myself in my late 30s with no retirement whatsoever. That was a while ago, and the short-term issues (being broke and with wind gone from the sails) cleared in about 2 years, and my income is again quite fine, and the spirit lives on. However, I will likely have to work until I die as a result of having no retirement savings. What has been built back since the fallout will not be sufficient for a long-term retirement. So now I work new strategies to transfer what I earn to safer investments (real estate) in order to have some assets to liquidate later in order to fund a retirement. All this said, it's not pathetic to me -- I made my decision, and I'm living with it. I expect nobody to provide me any "safety net" (that just wouldn't be genuine living). However, I would strongly discourage anyone from following this same path.