A fixed ₹5,000 a month feels substantial when you're earning ₹40,000, and barely noticeable once you're earning ₹1,00,000. If you keep saving the same flat amount as your income grows, your savings rate quietly shrinks even as your number stays the same. The fix is to save a percentage of income instead of a fixed rupee figure.
Here's how it works in practice. Decide on a percentage — say 15% — rather than an amount. At ₹40,000, that's ₹6,000. Get a raise to ₹55,000, and your saving automatically becomes ₹8,250, with zero extra decisions. You don't have to remember to "increase your SIP" every time you get a hike; the percentage does the increasing for you.
Why this matters: most people's spending creeps up with every raise, but their saving doesn't — unless it's deliberately built to scale too. Percentage-based saving keeps your savings rate constant (or growing) through every promotion and pay bump, instead of slowly eroding as a smaller and smaller share of a larger income.
To set this up, calculate the percentage figure each time your income changes and update your automated transfer or SIP amount accordingly — it takes two minutes. Even better, build in small percentage increases over time: start at 10%, move to 15% within a year, work toward 20%. Saving in percentages turns your savings rate into something that grows with your career, instead of something that has to be re-decided every single time you get paid more.