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For most adult Americans, their retirement accounts might well be their second biggest asset, after their home. For almost everybody, retirement accounts are significant assets that require attention.

Considering their significance, most of us don't understand how retirement accounts work, including the potentially disastrous consequences of making mistakes when working with them.

Ed Slott is one of the leaders in education of the general public about working with retirement accounts, including with his educational programs on public television.

Now he has issued his latest explanation in The Retirement Savings Time Bomb Ticks Louder, which includes explanations of the tax law changes in the SECURE Act of 2019 and SECURE 2.0 Act of 2022. This book is written in everyday language and is intended for the layman.

Two reasons the retirement savings time bomb "ticks louder" include the repeal of most "stretch" IRA payouts for inherited retirement accounts and potentially significantly higher federal income tax rates when the provisions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 expire after 2025.

The book covers lifetime planning with various retirement accounts, rollovers vs. direct transfers, permitted investments, cautions for alternative investments, beneficiary designations, estate planning, and required minimum distributions during the participant/account owner's lifetime and for inherited retirement accounts.

Both traditional retirement accounts and Roth accounts are explained. Since qualified distributions from Roth accounts are tax-free, Ed Slott clearly prefers them. For many accounts, Roth conversions (transferring a traditional IRA or employer retirement account to a Roth account) are available, but most taxpayers probably can't afford the income tax hit for the year of conversion.

With the loss of the ability to make "stretch" IRA payments over a beneficiary's lifetime for inherited retirement accounts and the complexity of dealing with handling inherited accounts, Ed Slott suggests considering whole life insurance policies held in an irrevocable life insurance trust as an alternative. He doesn't focus on the issues of the cost of premiums, which are not tax deductible. Life insurance is an important alternative which can solve many estate planning problems.

Professionals might be disappointed that there are few legal citations in the book, since it is written for the layman.

I highly recommend getting and reading The Retirement Savings Time Bomb Ticks Louder to prepare for a conversation about retirement and estate planning with your attorney, financial planner and tax advisor.

Buy it on Amazon: The Retirement Savings Time Bomb Ticks Louder: How to Avoid Unnecessary Tax Landmines, Defuse the Latest Threats to Your Retirement Savings, and Ignite Your Financial Freedom.

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