401K Loan and Employer Matching

[David M.]

Hello BP'ers,

I've been over and over the forums reading the 401K loan threads as much as possible, and see the point people are making when they mention that you are paying it back with post-tax dollars. However, if you have decent amount of employer matched funds that are available, is taking the 401K loan still worse than a hard-money loan?

As an example, if I could take a loan of roughly 25K - if I add up the amount of employer matching and gains over the course of my time in the plan, that adds up to be about 18K of the 25. The employer match is really a 100% return already, so doesn't that sort of offset the double taxation issue enough to be worth it?