I'm a consultant, a site reliability engineer, and that's about my yearly "fun budget". It took a lot of hard work and training and learning to get to this point, though, so my advice is to work hard 10 years ago.
It's important to make a favorable impression on people over time. Do good work, be trustworthy.
High-paid independent consulting gigs are based on a lot of mutual trust. You never know where the best referrals are going to come from, so do right by everyone.
What advice would you give