The Blubber

A record number of people are withdrawing from their 401(k) accounts to make ends meet, per Vanguard Group.

Vanguard tracks data on around five million people and said .5% of users or 25,000 took a 'hardship distribution' inn October; the highest share since the company started reporting the data in 2004. While the percentage of people is still low; financial experts call the uptick concerning.

"People are kind of feeling the pain and so, if there's not a lot of savings there, they're having to go to the only option which really should be the last option, which is a hardship withdrawal from their 401(k)," said Nicholas Pino, a certified financial planner with Capitol Financial Solutions.

Usually around .2% of people take out this type of withdrawal on average a month, according to Vanguard data.

Pino said hardship withdrawals come with ramifications. Workers generally have to pay a tax penalty for withdrawing from their 401k too soon. Some businesses also don't allow their workers to contribute to their 401K for months withdrawing money due to hardship.

"All of a sudden, you're thinking you're getting money out, but it's going to be heavily taxed, possibly penalized," he explained. "Then the market is down. So now we're doing all that and we're taking money out of our retirement plan when the market is depressed and so that can have such long term impacts on somebody's retirement."