Agreed. For a married couple at $300k in the bay area, less than $90k goes to taxes, and that's assuming just standard deduction. Realistically, if you're paying $6k/month for housing not including insurance, you're probably itemizing another $5-$10k above the standard deduction. And at $300k, you're hopefully maxing out a $19k 401k contribution pretax. Probably you'd be spending <$80k/year in tax.