💬 Salary comes on the 1st and by the 8th it's mostly gone. How do you save?

Salary comes on the 1st. By the 8th, most of it is gone. Every month, for about 6 years now. Rent, the car EMI, my mother's medicines, electricity, internet. That's half, and I'm okay with that half. It's the other half that disappears. Swiggy, a shirt I didn't need, a cousin's birthday, petrol, tea, more Swiggy. I look at my bank app on the 9th and I don't know where it went. I've tried a notebook. Wrote down every rupee for 3 weeks, then stopped writing because it was depressing. I've tried an app. It told me I spent 4,800 on food delivery in September. I deleted the app. I've tried the envelope thing my grandmother did, cash in different envelopes. Nobody uses cash anymore. So every month I start with a plan and by the 2nd weekend the plan is a joke. A friend at work told me to set up an automatic transfer on salary day. Before I even see the money. He's been doing it since 2019 and he has an actual savings account with actual money in it. I set it up last week. 8,000 rupees on the 1st, straight into an RD, gone before I can touch it. Let's see if I survive the month. I'm a bit nervous about the 25th. Anyone good at this? How do you stop the money just leaking out in small amounts? I'm not looking for big investment advice. Just how normal people keep a bit aside every month. And if the automatic thing worked for you, tell me. I need some encouragement right now. My mother has saved money her whole life on a teacher's salary. I'm too embarrassed to ask her.

The automatic transfer helped me too, but I had to start small or I panicked halfway through the month. I began with 3,000 and raised it by 500 every few months until it stopped hurting.

The automatic transfer is the only thing that worked for me too. I tried doing it by hand for years. Every month there was a reason to skip it. A wedding, a trip to Hyderabad, a new phone. Now 10,000 leaves on the 1st before I see the balance. Missed it the first month, forgot by the second. Don't touch the account for a year. That's the only other rule I follow.