As I mentioned in an earlier review, the company I work for recently sold out to another company. Even though we all remained employed, some changes were made in our benefits; including our 401K accounts. Mostly they decided to end the company’s relationship with Principal Financial Group.
And, unfortunately, that’s a move I am not too happy about.
I’ve had a 401K for several years but, it wasn’t until we moved the accounts to Principal that I first started understanding exactly what it was I was doing.
There were a couple reasons I fell in love the Principal Financial Group.
First, I could take either a hands on approach to my retirement fund or I could elect to have them manage the fund for me.
As hard
as this might be to believe, I actually felt more comfortable doing the latter. Let’s be honest here, if you’re not involved in that kind of thing on a daily basis, do you really know which investments are the best to put your money into? And, until the economy went to heck to the point everyone started losing money, my 401K was actually growing for the first time since I started it; an average of about 8% per year.
If I wanted to keep track of my retirement savings, it was as easy as logging into their web site. Between the spreadsheets and extensive analysis, I was able to see how my money was doing, where it could be improved and how fast it was growing. Everything was easy to read too; I didn’t need to be a financial expert to understand it.
What I’ll really miss about Principal Financial Group though is the customer service.
I’ve had to call them on a couple of different occasions and the first thing I noticed is I got a live person within a couple of minutes; I didn’t have to wait on hold forever or go through some sort of long automated voice mail to find the right department. You can’t imagine how much I appreciated that considering I spend all day on the phone at work and really don’t want to be on the phone more than I have to at home.
For example, a year ago, I needed to take out a loan from ...
