I believe the technical term for what we have been experiencing in the financial markets is: Aargh! (“Bloodsuckingly bad” also works.)

I’m not sure how much it helps, but I’ve been through something like this before, during the market meltdown of 2008, when the S&P 500 fell more than 38 percent in just that year.

But most millennials, the people born from 1981 to 1996, have not experienced these kind of losses as investors. How should they be thinking about their financial future?

To find out, I asked the authors of three of my favorite personal finance books for their most important pieces of long-term advice.