Palm Beach Research Group’s The 501k Plan Review: Free Book Offer Letter?

The “501(k)” Plan is a free hardcover book written by financial expert Ted Benna and offered as part of a package deal to customers interested in learning how to supercharge their own financial investment strategies. The book, along with several other bonuses, is currently available for anyone willing to pay just $4.95 shipping and handling and contains supposedly insider information geared towards accessing new techniques on building your retirement income.

The Company

501(k) Plan is being offered by The Palm Beach Research Group, a Florida-based investment tip publishing company founded in 2011 by Mark Ford and Tom Dyson. The company specializes in selling subscription-based internet newsletters that provide investment advice that, supposedly and by the company’s own admission, result in a long-term 6 percent overall growth.

Whether this is true or not is relatively unknown. What is known, however, is that Palm Beach Research Group does have a large number of detractors across the internet, especially when it comes to claims that the company is more concerned with pushing subscription rates than they are with providing high levels of customer service. Many examples of customers finding it difficult or impossible to cancel auto-renewing subscriptions abound, as do customers being bombarded with constant upsell offers.

The end result, unfortunately, is that Palm Beach Research Group has developed a reputation for poor quality products and bait-and-switch tactics, all in an effort to balloon its subscriber revenue. There’s strong evidence that this 501(k) Plan free offer is part and parcel of the company’s tactics.

The Product

501(k) Plan is a hardcover book written by Ted Benna, a retirement savings expert that has been working in the financial industry since 1965. Benna’s credentials are well-known, as he was the innovator behind the first 401(k) retirement savings plan in 1980. Benna has published several books of investment advice over the years, with 501(k) Plan being the latest.

However, 501(k) Plan isn’t the only product bundled together in this free giveaway by Palm Beach Research Group. There are several “bonus” gifts that you receive as well, including:

A digital copy of the book: This enables you to begin reading the book immediately as you wait for the hardcover to arrive in the mail.

The “Retirement Crib Sheet”: This guide is a collection of tips from Palm Beach Research group that are geared toward helping you save money in a number of different ways, from knowing when to fill your gas tank to how to get free vitamins.

The “Four Ways to Immediately Boost Your Social Security” Report: This report is a guide designed to help you eke every last cent out of your Social Security benefit payments by supposedly exposing program loopholes that you can exploit to your benefit.

A “Free” 30-Day Subscription to the Palm Beach Letter: You also receive free access to The Palm Beach Letter, the Palm Beach Research Group’s flagship investment newsletter. After 30 days, however, you are automatically billed $99 for the rest of the year unless you opt out.

You receive all of this for just $4.95, which Palm Beach Group claims is to cover the cost of shipping your hardcover copy of 501(k) Plan to your door.

The Opportunity

The opportunity that Palm Beach Group is flogging in this “free” deal is, of course, to supercharge your ability to save for your retirement. Whether the information contained within 501(k) Plan will be successful for you in doing so is anybody’s guess; likewise it’s unclear whether the money-saving tips included in the bonus materials will help you accomplish this task either.

Verdict

We’re not confident that this free book offer is worth even $4.95, for a number of reasons. First and foremost, this “free offer” comes with way too many strings attached in the form of your complimentary month of The Palm Beach Letter. With what amounts to a long and checkered history of making it very hard for customers to unsubscribe from their monthly newsletter products, Palm Beach Research Group’s free offer is highly suspect in this light.

If you do want to examine 501(k) Plan to see for yourself if any of the investment advice it holds is applicable to your own circumstances, spending just $4.95 to access this information is likely a good deal. However, you must be aware that your “free bonus” needs to be canceled early if you don’t want to be on the hook for $99 a year for the rest of your natural life.