I've always had pretty meager savings, but hardly any debt for the better part of my adult life.
There is interestingly a difference between men and women in this regard, with women saving more, but investing less. Over the space of years, it makes a big difference for passive income.
Those are totally separate and those either come out before tax or they are paid just like any other bill I would normally pay.
This is the way to do it. It would be nice to have more basic automated services to set these things up. I know they exist, but I haven't used one.
I have two or three of them going into different areas. It would sometimes be nice if all my investments were in one area, but I like the idea of diversifying. Even though many of them probably hold the same companies. Automated bank services make it really easy to just set the expense and forget it.