Without notice, Principal stopped allowing withdrawals from one of the accounts in many retirement portfolios. These funds may not be available for up to 3 full years! Here are some details.

Effective September 26, 2008 a provision that may cause a delay in certain withdrawal requests was applied to the Principal U.S. Property Separate Account under this retirement plan. As a result of these changes, participants will be unable to immediately affect investment transfers out of this Separate Account, obtain a loan from funds within this Separate Account, or obtain certain distributions, in full, from this Separate Account.

Requests for some withdrawal transactions from the Separate Account may be delayed or processed in phases as cash from the investments under the Separate Account becomes available to meet demand. This period, during which participants will be able to request such rights under the plan, however the complete exercise may be delayed, is called a “blackout period”. Note how this blackout period may affect retirement planning, as well as participant’s overall financial plan. The blackout period for this Separate Account under the plan began on September 26, 2008 and will end no later than September 26, 2011.

Should conditions change and this period may end earlier than this date, notification will be provided. During the blackout period participants will continue to be able to request transactions from this Separate Account. However a delay may be applied to certain transactions of this Separate Account. For this reason, it is very important that participants review and consider the appropriateness of their current investments in light of their inability to diversify those investments during the blackout period.

For long-term retirement security, participants should give careful consideration to the importance of a well-balanced and diversified investment portfolio, taking into account all their assets, income and investments.

Federal law generally requires that you be furnished notice of a blackout period at least 30 days in advance of the last date on which you could exercise your affective rights immediately before the commencement of any blackout period in order to provide you with sufficient time to consider the effect of the blackout period on your retirement and financial plans. Advance notice was not possible in this situation because notification of the provision could not be communicated in advance of its application.

All participants received notice on September 26, 2008 via the Message Center in their Principal online accounts.