Marco Rubio

Marco Rubio cashed in some of his retirement savings to pay for household needs. Financial advisers say that's a bad idea.

(Molly Riley/Associated Press)

Today's Marco Rubio news: Anyone with a tax-deferred retirement account should know to leave the money alone until retirement, lest he face a 10 percent early withdrawal penalty as well as income taxes. But Marco Rubio, the U.S. senator from Florida who hopes to become president, cashed in part of his retirement nest egg, as he disclosed in a filing last week.

The home refrigerator was going. So was the air conditioning. And there will be college costs, and campaign costs. Life happens, in other words, and Rubio felt he needed the $68,000 in an account from the time when he practiced law.

"I'm not poor, but I'm not rich, either," he told Fox News Sunday.

Bad idea, said financial planners, although they noted that this was just one of Rubio's retirement accounts and he is unlikely to retire a pauper.

Still, a headline says it all: "Advisers blanch at Rubio cashing out 401(K)": Investment News.

Says another publication, one that ordinary savers turn to for advice: "If Florida Sen. Marco Rubio intends to lead by example, he's off to a rocky start": Money.

Granted, financial planners are the same people making ordinary Americans feel financially foolish for not budgeting scads of cash for retirement. But maybe they're right. "It sounds like he's in a cash crunch," Wes Shannon, owner of SJK Financial Planning, told Investment News. "That's because he hasn't planned well enough to have some emergency funds."