Principal‪®‬ 4+

Just your average Joe with a rollover IRA

I was very frustrated when I had learned my old employee rolled my IRA to a different financial group, then I look online and see all the horror stories about Principal Financial and their app. I had no choice but to find out for myself because that’s where my money is. Let me just say I’ve had zero problems with the app, zero problems with the company, and would recommend anyone who is on the fence about it to just try it for yourself. I was waiting to be disappointed and to my surprise I’ve had nothing but a positive experience.

Why are all medical apps so, so terrible?

I don’t understand how these medical insurance companies don’t have the ability to develop apps that are actually useful. If you are trying to find dental care with this app, good luck. It’s probably one of the worst that I have ever used. The search function is really wonky and difficult to use, not to mention the availability of dentists that take this insurance is incredibly limited. When I do find one like 20 miles away, and I go off the app to check their reviews and ratings, not only are ALL of them rated three stars and under, but if I take more than one minute to locate the practice and check them out online before making an appointment, I’m logged out of the app “for my privacy”. It’s already such a pain trying to find appropriate care, this app is making it infinitely harder than it needs to be. It’s gotta to be my sixth or seventh time having to log back in this morning going back-and-forth to check out different dental providers. There should be an option to keep you logged in, by your own choice - not by the app deciding you’ve been away too long because you take a minute to check someone out on Yelp. Ridic.

Developer Response ,

Hi there - We're sorry you had a negative experience with the Principal mobile app. If you haven't already done so, you can set up biometrics to speed up the login process.

Worse than the old version

A pet peeve of mine is when the “new and improved version” of something means lost functionality. Exhibit A would be the fact that you no longer get calculated monthly contribution feedback when you are deciding what percentage to contribute to each account. This was incredibly helpful in the “old” app. And the fact that I cannot see how the varying contributions will affect my family's finances until after I commit my changes is not an improvement. Am I expected to sit there with a calculator next to my phone so that I can make an informed decision. How is that an improvement? Plus I now have to navigate into sub menus to do things that were previously easy and informative. As far as I can see there is nothing new, they just moved stuff around and dumbed down the interface.

Developer Response ,

We're sorry you had a negative experience, but thank you for the feedback. We'll keep this in mind as we continue to expand our mobile capabilities.