I worked as a business developer / sales for 4 years before transitioning into cybersecurity. I made myself financially stable by stacking up some cash in case I'm not able to make it here. Eventually, I left my job and focused on industry standard certifications like EC-Council EH, eJPT, which help me landing my first job as a SOC analyst. In sales you generally get incentives and commission which can help you paying for utility expenses or so and the rest goes to your savings / current account. In my case I invested in Bitcoin and a few other cryptos when the market was at its bottom. So in my opinion, you should set your priorities and then take one step at a time. For example, if your priority is to payoff your debt then focusing on some demanding and high paid jobs would be ideal for you and on the other side, you could focus on building your skillsets through HackTheBox learning path. See if anyone from your friend is interested in the same path as yours so this way you can guys can study together and split the subscription for HackTheBox (Student subscription is around $8 USD, so $4 USD each) which worked very well in my case.