Thanks. Medical insurance paid by company? What is a normal amount people put in a retirement plan? Is that contribution tax deductible? If it is say like 20%, it seems easily 50% of your income are acounted for.

401ks are pretax, so you should max those out. Health premiums are fairly reasonable, I paid about $300/month when I was living in LA, that was just the employee side, the employee side was a lot more probably.

None of that is unique to California. Your overall tax burden in California will be about one percent higher than Texas, according to https://wallethub.com/edu/states-with-highest-lowest-tax-bur..., though Californians typically lay spot more taxes because they make more money.

I just wanted to reply to say thank you for that WalletHub link. Given the growing possibility my company will accept remote work, I'm more seriously looking into moving in order to minimize my CA induced tax burden, and I've always simply assumed that I was simply looking for places with no income tax. WalletHub's methodology that also includes property and sales taxes, AND presents them each as a share of income, makes a lot of sense, and has definitely changed my thought process significantly! Thank you!

401ks are pretax money.

In general, people put ~5% of their (pretax) money into 401ks because, on average, companies will match that ~5%, effectively doubling your retirement savings instantly.

A common thing to utilize after that is a ROTH IRA, which is paid with after tax money, but the money grows tax free. The max ROTH IRA contribution per year is $6k, $12k if you're married.

Is the matching by the company also tax exempt?

It is tax-deferred, meaning you’ll pay tax on it later.

Tax-exempt would be never paying tax on it.

Yes it is