Definitions: Pay yourself first or Save first before paying or buying other stuffs on your pay day!
This is the basic to begin with personal finance management, Save First! You should have a separate bank or investment account (potentially yield better interest rate) which you should pay to when you receive your pay check, take this as part of a “mandate bill” to pay to yourself. Without doing so, you will probably only save what is left from your salary which is totally wrong. At the end of the salary month you will probably ask yourself “where did my money go?“, where you should actually “tell my money where to go!“.
On every pay day, before you pay your bills or spend on any other things, pay yourself first by transferring 10% to 20% of your salary into a separate bank account, the more the merrier. Whatever you have left should be the amount you use to sustain your lifestyle. Take it that these money you have saved are gone, but of course literally they are not gone, it’s just put out of sight.
If you are saying you can’t as your salary is needed to cover all your expenses, then I will say you have a budgeting issue. It’s time to review your expenses to ensure “You Pay Yourself First”.
This definitely will require a lot of discipline to begin with and follow through. We should apply this in the Personal Finance Management, we will learn more about how to do when we come to the Financial Planning Topic under 1-Set Base.