L. K. Benson & Company

L. K. Benson & Company

Lyle K. Benson, Jr. founded the firm in 1994 after building a financial planning practice inside a larger CPA firm for fifteen years. His conviction was that a partnership structure serving a broad client base could not deliver the depth that individuals required. Three decades later, the firm is deliberately small — a handful of CPAs and CFPs — and explicitly targets clients navigating transition events: retirement, sale of a business, divorce, inheritance, or the death of a spouse. The firm structures portfolios around each client's financial plan rather than chasing benchmark outperformance. It builds and manages portfolios through Charles Schwab custody, coordinates with existing money managers, or provides recommendations for self-directed investors — always emphasizing diversification and low cost. Its core differentiator is tax integration: the team prepares federal and state returns for individuals, partnerships, S-corporations, LLCs, and trusts internally, then feeds those tax projections into year-end planning and estimated payments. The firm explicitly declines to buy or sell individual stocks and bonds, rejecting tactical trading in favor of strategic asset allocation. L. K. Benson does not disclose assets under management or total deployment. The firm bills clients through fixed quarterly retainers based on complexity rather than asset percentage; new engagements start at a minimum of $10,000 annually. Project work such as standalone tax returns or one-time financial plans is billed hourly, with rates ranging from $175 to $540. As of August 2025, the firm relocated its sole office from Towson to 9690 Deereco Road in Timonium, Maryland. L. K. Benson's structural edge is that it is not structurally optimized for growth. By capping its client base and charging flat fees, the firm sidesteps the asset-gathering incentive that pushes most RIAs toward scale. That architecture allows it to act as a true multi-family office substitute for clients who value tax and estate coordination over access to proprietary investment products. The tradeoff is an absence of institutional infrastructure: no dedicated deal-sourcing, no internal alternatives team, and no published track record beyond the planning and compliance work it handles in-house.