So I think you missed the point of the article, this is a very modest "middle class" kind of budget. Yes you could save a little more here and there, but the point is to have even a modest lifestyle in San Francisco you would need to be making 300k a year. Even if you cut back on a few of the discretionary categories ( food, car, 401k, ... ) and lived like a miser you are going to have 20k of disposable income a year. Like you said that still means you need to have two incomes, and two really well paying incomes.

I think the point the author is getting across is that due to the exteremly high fixed costs of living almost anywhere in the country ( but specifically in big coastal cities ), its impossible to have that kind of "middle class" lifestyle that was the majority of the population in these places a few decades ago.