re: HELOC or 401K

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Not true; it's determined by the 401k plan. My old company's 401k gave up to 8 years to repay a loan regardless of employment status. Though I'm sure this isn't common.

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Already clarified this earlier in the thread, but was talking about being taxed and penalized by the govt if not paid back by next tax return year, which is true, on many/most 401k loans.

The grand majority of 401k loans will be called in due ASAP when terminated, it's pretty rare they will just let you continue to pay back on original terms after terminated. Tax cuts and jobs act made it to where they couldnt report it as a distribution to govt. until tax return of following year, giving you a little more time to pay it back than you beforehand.

There's pretty much no incentive to them letting you pay it back on long terms after you leave, which is why most require it due when you do leave otherwise they will report it as a distribution to IRS which you pay tax + penalty on if under 59.5.

So there can be cases where they dont, but obviously anyone getting into a 401k loan needs to check beforehand and make 100% sure. All plans will typically have 5+ years to pay back, but most of those are thrown out the window when you terminate. If they call it when you're term'd and you owe a ton, it could hurt bad if you cant pay it back getting hit with that tax bill and penalty come next tax season.

In general borrowing from retirement is just a bad idea considering how much the market has really ran though. You can borrow money so cheap why take money out that probably is making you 10+%. Imagine the people who cashed out some retirement last year "penalty free" if they didnt need to and lost out on that huge run the market had.