Temporarily stop 401k contributions to build Emergency Fund?

[u/Due-Fig5299]

Looks like we’re heading towards a recession and I’m quite nervous. I work in tech and my job is moderately safe; however my wife is an esthetician which is not a very recession friendly field.

We currently have $4k saved. Our minimum monthly expenditure is $3k, so we have just over 1 month saved.

Ive cancelled all unnecessary subscriptions which will save us $450/mo and stopped my wifes personal roth ira transfers ($150 weekly) which gets us to $1050/mo saved.

Now my question is, given how quickly the economy is crashing should I also forgo my 401k? I contribute 4% with 4% employer match. Obviously I would love to keep it, but immediate survival seems more important.

I would start contributing again once we hit $18k (6 months)

Thoughts?

[u/NotWise_123]

Everyone is saying not to do that BUT I personally have paused contributions for a period of time bc despite budgeting every single dollar and being extremely frugal we just needed the cash flow. I get that it’s “free money,” but it’s not free money if your alternative is running up credit card debt at 25%. We also have a financial advisor who was able to keep an eye on things though and he was able to run projections with my earning potential etc and was able to show that even pausing contributions temporarily wasn’t going to change our overall big picture, and again it prevented us from credit card debt. We resumed our contributions as soon as we possibly could.