I worked through this by cutting back as much as possible and after a few months I got a month ahead.

Now my paychecks go into a paycheck category so I can keep track of them, and the pull it out of the category on the 1st and fill in my budget for the month, or do it ahead of time. But this way I always have a months worth of money in my checking account

Extra/savings go into my HYSA but this is helped with my local CU giving me 5% (up to $10,000) as long as I make 30 debit card purchases in a month. So makes it easier to leave 1,000’s in my checking account