I’ve been in the Foreign Service for three and a half years — just long enough to have settled into the rhythm of this strange, rewarding career, but not long enough to have lived through a government shutdown. Until now.

Before this week, shutdowns were something I’d only read about in the news or heard colleagues swap war stories about over coffee. Now, I’m living it.

There’s something surreal about seeing your own government grind to a halt while you’re overseas representing it. Messages from Washington about which operations are “excepted” or “non-excepted” start trickling in. Colleagues are trying to figure out if they’ll still be coming to work, and under what conditions. Locally employed staff — who are the backbone of our missions — start asking if they’ll be paid.

You can feel the unease ripple through the building. People are still showing up, doing their jobs, but there’s this shared sense of frustration and helplessness. It’s a weird thing to be part of a global diplomatic machine that suddenly has to run on fumes because folks on Capitol Hill can’t agree on a budget.

And then you remember: we aren’t getting paid this pay period.

Working through a government shutdown is a full on financial gut check. You know all the conventional advise about keeping an emergency savings fund? If you’re a government employee, it’s absolutely essential.

I am lucky in that I have always heeded conventional wisdom to build myself a financial safety net, but it still felt strange, and wrong, to have to actually tap into it. I had always thought of it as money that I likely would never touch until I retire, stewing in a high yield savings account because it’s the right thing to do. Leave it to a government shutdown to prove me wrong and fully appreciate the value of an emergency savings fund.

Eventually I will get paid and will be able to replenish my fund, but to anyone out there reading that hasn’t yet, build your emergency fund now. Even if it’s slow — $50 a paycheck, $200 when you can — it adds up.

This is my first shutdown, and I hope it’s my last — but I’m not betting on it. -Nick