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Hi, I'm new here and dying to ask some good questions. Myself and some co-workers have been racking our brains over these. I have what I think is a dandy of a set of questions. First one, with regard to double taxation of a traditional 401k loan. I don't see how the loan portion is not double taxed when you consider the retirement part (not just when you take the loan and pay it back). When you pay back the pre-tax money, you pay it back with after tax money. Then at retirement, when you take a distribution, you pay tax again on that money that was borrowed at some point. So that, to me, is a double taxation is it not? THere's alot online talking about double taxation, but the articles never include the distribution tax (which will vary depending on the size of the tax) at retirement. I am always trying to think long term. Second one, much more involved, and I have to give a bit of backstory. I've been at my company for 13 years now, started when I was 21. I am 34 now. WHen i started, I opened a traditional 401k account. They did not offer ROTH 401k accounts until THIS YEAR. They match 6% no matter which account you contribute to. So, if you're answering this question, you know that the Roth 401k means you pay after tax contributions, then don't pay taxes anymore on that money when you take distributions at retirement. The opposite is true with traditional 401ks, you pay pre tax contributions to your account and then pay distributions at the ordinary income rate depending on the size of the distributions. SO, now for the interesting part. Would it be beneficial to borrow against a Roth 401k instead of from a Traditional 401k? It seems to me that I could exponentially build up a Roth 401k in a more tax efficient manner by at first maxing out the contributions for say, 2 years (17.5k x 2 years = 35k), and then at the end of 2 years, borrow 50% of the balance. I then set up a loan repayment for a term of 1 year and drop my contribution rate down to 6%. The money I borrowed is kept in a savings, to supplement income or to hold in case of some emergency, where I need to pay that loan back off in the event I might lose my job. But, I could effectively save up a lot more than the 17.5k limit per year because you end up paying back that loan quickly (1 year), and then take out a loan for more and more until you reach the 50k limit). This takes some years to achieve obviously. But you never have to worry about distributions ever again becuase you've already paid the tax. And, you're going to pay the tax on your income ANYWAYS, whether i borrow against the Roth 401k and pay it back with after tax money, or not borrow from the Roth 401k and put the after tax money in my savings account. It's just a way to possibly 'loophole' yourself to a higher contribution. Thirdly, I called my HR dept. and also called Wells Fargo advisors and both told me I cannot distinguish where the money comes from if I were to take a loan out. Say I had 100k in a 401k and 100k in a Roth 401k. Then say I apply for a 50k loan. I cannot choose to remove 50k from the Roth 401k specifically. The WF advisor says it all comes out of the 'pile'. There are 2 separate balances, but it is all considered 1 pile to borrow from. I thought that was a little bit silly. I stated that this has major tax implications at Retirement, becuase I would never know how much money came out of which account, and at retirement the taxes on distributions are different. The WF advisor told me in this case money would be pulled equally from both balances. Seems a bit strange. What if I had 100k in the traditional and 20k in the Roth? Are they gonna pull 5 times the amount from the traditional then? Seems odd to me. That's a lot to stew on. Any views on this would be appreciated.