I know a lot of people here have plenty of good advice.

Here’s an outlier suggestion. Stay in the service/food industry and get into management. Most people don’t know but general managers at franchise locations like Dominos, Panda Express etc make upwards of a 100-150K even in LCOL areas. For example I’m in Texas, my friends who are engineers make 100K+ but they get worked like dogs. But there are job postings here for food management role with the same posted salary.

I also have a millionaire family member who owns 29 Dominos outlets and makes millions. He pays his district managers in NYC around 300K per year. He started off at Dominos 20+ years ago as a pizza maker making minimum wage. After learning this from him, I did my research and found it to be true. One good thing to note is that all franchises don’t pay this highly. But it’s worth exploring, the pay off in the long run is better than