There are a lot of great feedback posted already. However, I'd like to suggest looking at it differently. I've gone through job/pay upgrades many many times and

There are a lot of great feedback posted already. However, I'd like to suggest looking at it differently. I've gone through job/pay upgrades many many times and lifestyle also gets upgraded as well. None of those ways truly/quickly works unless you sacrifice a lot! The one approach that finally got me financial freedom and relaxed happiness was to take up side investment activities. The process and nuances will vary based on where you live, geo-economical opportunities and your current "valuable assets". I'm in IT and high tech and wife is in personal finance. We saw equity on our house and both me and wife have perfect credit score. We took out equity and lines of credit and bought a demolition house project with Tier-A mortgage (bank low interest mortgage). That house already had the permits but previous owner was scared to go through the actual build. We got a B-Lender to help "new construction" costs (they give you money phases by phase as you progress through the construction) but the interest is 3-4x bank mortgage. It didn't matter to us because typically the whole loan duration is 1-1.5 years. Important to mention we hired a professional builder (a long vetting process) to oversee the whole project as we didn't want to get involved with day to day labour and contractors ... we just managed the taste/style and money. The builder usually gets paid after the project is finished but we made a deal to pay half after the house sold. Long story short, for every $1 out of our pocket, we got $3.25 profits before taxes and the whole thing took 20 months. We now repeat this process with 2 or 3 projects every year. NOTE: we don't put all our eggs into this basket (2008 housing meltdown anyone). We've started hedging into other investment not closely related to housing.