Principal®

Review by eFreeware

Retirement savings have a way of drifting into the background. You set a contribution rate when you enroll, glance at a statement now and then, and the years pass without much sense of whether the number is heading anywhere useful. The Principal app, from Principal Financial Group, Inc., is built around closing that gap by putting the essentials of a retirement account on your phone.

It is a free app for Android, released in March 2019, with more than a million installs and a 4.7 average across 45,142 ratings. Those numbers suggest a settled, widely used tool rather than a newcomer, which fits its purpose: it is the mobile companion to accounts you already hold with the company, not a standalone planning product.

What the app actually does

The core of the app is account access. You can view balances, roll over funds, change how much you contribute, and adjust how your money is invested. These are the routine moves people make when their circumstances shift, and having them on a phone means a raise, a new budget or a change of mind does not have to wait for a desktop session.

Alongside the transactions, the app carries a financial education section covering budgeting, saving and paying down debt. That material is separate from your account balance but sits in the same place, which is a reasonable arrangement: the moment you are looking at your savings is often the moment you are willing to read about how to manage them better.

There is also a Retirement Wellness Score, which the developer describes as personalized. It is meant to show how you are tracking toward your retirement goals, turning a set of balances and contributions into a single measure you can watch over time.

Checking in without logging into a desktop

The day-to-day value here is the quick check-in. Opening the app to confirm a balance landed, to see whether a contribution change took effect, or to review how investments are allocated takes far less effort than finding a computer and working through a full website.

The transaction list is short but sensible. Rolling over funds, changing contributions and adjusting investments are exactly the actions a plan participant tends to want between enrollment and retirement, and each is the sort of thing that benefits from being done the moment it occurs to you.

The app was updated in October 2026 with user experience improvements and bug fixes. That kind of maintenance note is unglamorous, but for a financial app it is the relevant one: the work is in keeping the screens usable and the flows intact.

Education and the Retirement Wellness Score

The educational side is broader than the account side. Budgeting, saving and debt payoff are general personal finance topics, not retirement-specific ones, and the app treats them as part of the same picture. If your retirement contributions compete with a credit card balance or a tight monthly budget, that framing makes sense.

The Retirement Wellness Score is the piece I would expect people to return to most. A single score that reflects progress toward retirement goals is easier to interpret at a glance than a portfolio value, and it gives the app something to show on a repeat visit even when nothing has changed in the account.

One caveat belongs here rather than anywhere else: the developer notes that the educational material is not intended as a recommendation. It is there to inform, not to advise, and it should be read that way.

Insurance details in the same place

The app also lets you find your insurance information. For anyone who holds both retirement and insurance products with the company, that means one less place to look when a question comes up about coverage.

Principal Life Insurance Co., part of the Principal Financial Group in Des Moines, Iowa, handles the insurance products and plan administrative services. The app is the mobile face of that arrangement rather than a marketplace for comparing policies.

What it requires, and where the limits sit

The most important thing to understand before installing is that this is not a general-purpose finance app. It is for people with a retirement plan or insurance relationship with Principal.

What you can see and do depends on your plan type. Two people with accounts at the same company may see different screens and different options, which is a function of how workplace plans are set up rather than a shortcoming of the app itself.

Some changes are handled on the website instead. For those, the developer directs users to principal.com. So the app covers the common actions, and some paths lead back to the website.

On cost, there is nothing to weigh: the app is free, carries no ads and offers no in-app purchases. The trade-offs here are about scope and eligibility, not money.

Who gets the most from it

The clearest fit is someone already participating in a retirement plan administered by Principal who wants to keep an eye on it without sitting down at a computer. If your main questions are what the balance is, whether your contribution is right and how your investments are allocated, this covers them.

It also suits people who want a nudge toward the broader picture. The education section and the Retirement Wellness Score give the app a second job beyond account administration, and that combination is what makes a repeat visit worthwhile rather than a chore.

Someone holding insurance through the company gets an additional reason to keep it installed, since policy information lives alongside the retirement account.

A practical companion for existing Principal accounts

The Principal app does a focused job: it puts retirement account balances, contributions, investments and rollovers on a phone, adds insurance information and a layer of financial education, and wraps it in a Retirement Wellness Score that gives you something to watch. It is free, ad-free and has no purchases to navigate.

The limits are worth stating plainly. Those are conditions of the product, not flaws in it.

If you already hold a retirement plan or insurance policy with the company and want quicker access to it, this is a straightforward install. The 4.7 average across more than 45,000 ratings suggests plenty of people in that position have found it useful. If you are looking for a general budgeting or investing app to manage money held elsewhere, this one is built for a different job.

What's new in version 4.0.161

UX improvements and bug fixes