I think you're confusing marginal tax rate with effective rate. As a single person in California making $150k p.a., your take-home pay is about $95k per year, or $7,900 per month.
~35% goes out to your standard/official taxes
then you pay ~8% of whatever you spend to cover sales tax
then you pay ~2% of whatever your home is worth for property taxes (renters don't see this as tax but its built into the monthly payment)
and then there are lots of other smaller things like the car registration fees, bridge tolls (that may be a more of a bay area thing).
Anyhow its not exact but the way I budget is that 50% of my income is for actual spending/saving and have found that that ends up being about right
I only make $50k and I'm saving $30k a year. I'm fairly sure if I quadrupled my income I could at least double my savings.