Inflation is causing pain in the pocketbook and hardship distributions show that.

Fidelity found that 2.4 percent of 22 million people with retirement accounts in its system took hardship withdrawals in the final quarter of 2022, up half a percentage point from a year earlier. A similar review by Vanguard showedthat 2.8 percent of five million people with retirement accounts made a hardship withdrawal last year, up from 2.1 percent a year earlier.

In the first three months of 2023, Bank of America has found that the number of people taking hardship withdrawals jumped 33 percent from the same period a year earlier, with workers taking out an average of $5,100 each.