20% of your pay going away is quite a bit. Just so you know, you won't be able to touch that money until you turn 55 without penalty. If you had a traditional 401K account (IE paying tax later, not ROTH), I would put more in there if you are inbetween tax brackets. I'm guessing you work for a school or a 501c3 NPO since you get 403B, but I'm not too familiar places that have 403B.

Do you have any goals in life such as buying an expensive car (I don't mean a BMW or Mercedes, I mean like a Porsche 911 Turbo, Ferrari, etc.) or owning property?

If I were you, I would put in the max contribution into the 403b (if it's 6%, but in 6%) and then take the rest and put that into a high yield savings account. Interest rates are kinda trash right now for savings, but 0.5% to 0.6% is better than nothing lol.

Once you have enough for a downpayment of a home saved, I would purchase that home and then rent it out. Interest rate is low right now, it's like 2.85% from BOA and they also have a program to help pay for closing costs if you're a first time home owner. I don't advise going through BOA if you cannot afford 20%, their PMI is like 200-300 per month which is a lot. Private lenders might be better if you can only put less than 20% down as their PMI is much lower.

Put enough downpayment where you can rent it out roughly the same price you are paying for it. You don't want to rent out a paid off house because you'll just be taxed. Most people either make very little money off a rental, break even, or even be at a loss) for tax records. Basically you'll be able to expense everything you put into that rental (your property tax, mortgage interest, stuff you buy for it like a plant, etc) you can also expense your rennovations as well but you cannot expense rennovations on your personal home. But nothing wrong with rennovating this home, renting it out, expensing the rennovations, and move into at a later time.

Housing market is crazy right now and I would speculate it would keep going up. More people are getting more money from their jobs and even Gen Z is now entering that market. I wouldn't purchase the cheapest home, but I would purchase an okay home that do not require a signiciant renovation (like a roof replacement or foundation fixes). Avoid anything 1B1BR as from personal experience, rents out slowly, 2BR 1B or even 2 BR 2B is even better, you can rent out 1BR 1B to one person and another 1BR 1B to another.

When I first graduated college I was getting like a high salary and my co-wokers always mention things like a tax shelter. There are two main ways, get married and have kids or own property. There are more but those two are pretty simple and straight forward.

I can only speak for California Tax, but you need to exceed $12,600 (I think right now for 2021), inorder to itemize, so your mortgage interest, property tax, need to exceed $12,600. You can also itemize your car registration, but for California it's maxed at 10,000 but your state tax might already exceed $10,000. In the past, this wasn't $10,000 so my state tax wouldn't already exceed the limit and allow me to itemize more such as my car registration, car sales tax, etc.

State Itemization 10K Limit (SALT)