Is there a way to tell your computer what default folder you want to save documents in?

When I go to save a file, I would like my computer to default to a certain folder when it asks me where to save it. As it is, sometimes it opens to a recently saved-to folder, and sometimes it opens to a system folder called “temp.” I have lost so many files by saving them to temp because it was the default. I want to make a different folder the default that it opens to when I save a word, pdf, or excel file.