The car numbers jump out at me. The rest sounds familiar but you must have some nice cars to run up those car tax, loan, and insurance bills.

For comparison, a couple of 5 year old Japanese cars run me less than $100/month insurance and around $600/year in property tax in NoVA. No payments because we saved up and paid cash, but if there were, they'd be well under $1,900/month.

> State and federal tax + ss take about 45% of gross.

Even after the mortgage deduction? Have you calculated your effective tax rate? Mine is around 30%, including sales taxes.