In sports, a hat trick is when, essentially, three good things happen in a row.  Such as three wins or, in hockey where the term is most often used, a player scores three goals in a game.  To date, I haven't heard a similar term for three bad things in a row-such as three missed goals in hockey.  The only reference I have is an old television game show called Press Your Luck!  In it, the Whammy was a fictional character that took your money when you landed on a special (though not in a good way) space on the game board.  The fact that the Whammy took your money makes it a perfect metaphor for today.

The first Whammy was the housing bust.  You bought a house and now it just isn't worth as much, or, worse, is worth less-perhaps a lot less-then you paid.

The second Whammy was the stock market bust.  You invested just like everyone said you should and now you've got as little as half the money you used to have.

Don't get me wrong, you should still want to own a home and invest, but those two Whammies have hurt.  They probably set you back years on your retirement goals and made you seriously question, if not completely rethink, your long-term financial plans.

Now, a survey by CFO Research Services on behalf of Charles Schwab shows that there's a third Whammy hitting some folks.  Nearly 25% of the surveyed senior finance and human resources professionals reported that their companies eliminated the employer match in their 401(k) plans.  Add the 15% of employers who have reduced their match, and you get a grand total of almost 40% of responding employers cutting back or eliminating what about 90% of those same employers consider the most important benefit of their company's plan-the match.  That's a bigger hit than many may realize based on the history of the defined contribution plan (also known as the 401(k)).  A brief, and wildly truncated, history is in order.

In years past, retirement was viewed as a three legged stool.  The first leg was Social Security (we won't go into the problems with this program, as they are beyond the scope of this report); the second was personal savings; and the third was a defined benefit pension (most would just call this a pension, leaving off the defined benefit part).  The pension is, essentially, a guarantee from employers to employees for certain benefits in retirement, such as an income stream and, for some, medical benefits.  

Companies quickly realized that the defined benefits angle was expensive for the company, so many entities began to offer defined contribution plans (known as 401(k) plans).  In the latter, the company effectively pushed as much cost off onto the employee as possible.  Thus, the company put money in, but often only when the employee put money in first (the match of many plans).  So, without the match, there's little benefit for employees other than the tax savings associated with deferring current taxes on contributions (distributions from these plans get taxed as income, so don't think there's any escaping the tax man).  

But, the problem is more insidious than this brief explanation suggests.  Many employees view their 401(k)s as their savings-not a replacement for the pension leg of the retirement stool.  So, what has happened is that many people now have just two legs on which to balance their retirement because they have mentally joined two of them together.  That's one unstable stool now that many companies are cutting back or eliminating their matching contributions.  (Add the issues likely to face Social Security and you get to something between one and one-a-half legs-which sounds more like the pogo stick of retirement!)

So, the news out of CFO Research Services for Charles Schwab isn't good.  Some people are truly feeling the Triple Whammy!  I don't remember what happened in that old game show when someone got four Whammies, but we might find out the real life implications if there are any more Whammies out there for the hard hit employees of the country.