I'm from MS and live in LA (in an area with higher col/Inc tax than what I had on the coast in MS) and your after tax looks pretty low unless it's factoring in other benefits. The calc should be closer to 20%, not 30, but obviously dependent on your situation.

2k per month in LA covers ~800 (10% salary) of retirement & Inc taxes. Granted it does take retirement matching to push it over 1k.

That leaves around 4,600 for everything else. Bump retirement to 15% and you're looking at 4,400. Definitely not near the max for retirement, but definitely pretty good.

Now that COL comes into play in the calc, 4,400 goes a lot further and you can put even more to retirement. It should cover a mortgage and nice car with plenty of leftover. I'd personally pay the car off first and put that note to the mortgage (or split between retirement/mortgage/saving for a rental investment, etc).

I was recently in this type of situation, so it's pretty fresh in my head. But I'm also the type who has all this planned out to the dollar.