You will not find any fans of cashing out the 401k on this site unless you are in danger of losing your house or some similar extreme circumstance. Even then, most would recommend some extreme cuts before the retirement accounts are considered. Do NOT cash out the retirement plan. You will have to pay taxes and a 10% early withdraw penalty, which will only leave you somewhere around $3000 to use toward your CCs. Plus you loose all the future compounding.
I ran a calculation assuming you only pay $600/month at 18% interest. At that rate you will have the CCs paid off in 2 years. While this isn't the best situation, it also is not dire. I bet if you post your full budget, the people here could help find areas to save and you would be able to pay off the CCs sooner. Also, any "extra" money you get like birthday money or bonuses or a tax return could go straight to the CCs to help pay them off sooner.
Bottom line - DO NOT touch the retirement accounts.
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