I was working through the whole thing, but it felt like a gut punch. I think I wouldn't be able to stomach it if I were living off that money. So I expect that when I get to FIRE, I'll probably move at least a couple months, if not a whole year, of expenses into bonds. I won't be FIRE until that's only 4% or less of my portfolio, so I figure it's a decent hedge.
When I first started working, I was saving 50% of my paycheck. After it got to be a couple thousand dollars, I would log in once a week and sometimes see, "oh neat, I just earned 2 days pay in the market, that's like working 7 days this week" or "crap, I just lost a half day of pay!"
This is the wrong way to think about the investment.
When the "great recession" happened, I would log in and see that, year to date, I had lost an entire year's salary.
Luckily, I had some investment-minded coworkers who held my hand and made me really look at what I had lost.
Which was nothing.
Nothing is lost until you sell. Nothing is gained until you sell. Oh wait, dividends.
So now I don't actually look at the total dollar amounts anymore, I just look at the shares. How many more shares do I own this week over last week? Because that number only ever goes up. And when the market is going down it goes up even faster!
It's a low information diet kind of a solution.