The best way to make more money is to get a new job.

But aren’t we supposed to be loyal to the company we work for, pay our dues, and wait for a promotion? Maybe in our parent’s generation, but that’s just not how things work anymore. Even though wage growth has picked up recently, “wage growth” means you’re only going to make about 3% more every year. With rent increases, taxes, and inflation, you’re really making the same amount of money year after year. That’s just depressing.

All things equal, how much control do you actually have right now over how much money you make? Sure, you could get a side hustle and make more money that way. You could also ask for a raise or wait until your salary goes up at the end of the year. But those things happen maybe once a year and a $2,000 raise really isn’t a $2,000 raise since a lot of it goes to the tax man, inflation, and your landlord.

Actually, the best way to increase your take home pay is not to get a side hustle, or ask for a raise, but to get an entirely new job instead. You may make a few thousand dollars here or there from a side hustle, or your raise might be worth a couple of thousand, but from talking to fellow millennials, the best way to increase your take home pay is to get a new job that just pays you more, like thousands of dollars more.

That being said, getting a new job is a total pain in the butt. You have to perfect your resume, then start filling out applications, then go on interviews, and hopefully after a few months you have a new job. A lot of work though.

We get criticized a lot for this. We hop from job to job and can’t be counted on to stay at a company for very long.

But do you blame us?

When wage growth is this slow and we end up with the same take home pay year after year, what are we supposed to do? Some of us get a side hustle, but that takes up a lot of our valuable free time. Some of us stay the course, but that just means we end up in the same place at the end of the year.

And some of us switch to jobs that pay us more to jobs that value our time. And then when they stop valuing our time, we move on to something better. And on and on it goes.

-Zack