Your 401(k) balance shows a number. You can see it. It has your name on it. You earned every dollar of it.
And while you still work there, you may not be able to touch any of it.
This is the part of retirement saving that feels wrong to people, and the reason is that a 401(k) is not really your account in the way a bank account is. It is an account held for you, inside a plan your employer wrote, governed by a document you have probably never read.
That document decides whether you can take money out while employed. Federal law sets the outer boundaries. Your employer decides how much of that space to actually use.
Which produces the answer nobody likes: it depends on your plan, and two people at different companies with identical circumstances get different answers.
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But the possibilities are finite, there are five of them, and they are worth knowing before an emergency arrives and you are reading a plan document at midnight.