Spending from your 401k is different than liquidating it (until the end... if you've got a month or a year of funds in the 401k and you take it all out, sure that's liquidated, but if it took you 10+ years to use it all up, it's not liquidating in casual conversation)
> Spending from your 401k is different than liquidating it
Define "liquidating". Do you mean moving all investments in the 401k to cash and equivalents? That seems sensible if you don't want any more market-risk exposure going forward. Withdrawing everything at once seems ill-advised because you'll get hit with high taxes unless your 401k balance is really small.