My best advice (in the short term) is to contribute to a huge open source project. At the depths of my boredom I contributed to dotnet, who better to learn from than the people who make your tools? Amazingly bright minds to learn from.
Contribute to React. Contribute to Boost. Contribute to Scala. What are you using, or what do you wish you could to use? Contribute to that.
I don't even need to earn $250k like them. If they were giving me $240k I would've been okay. But $180k, come on...
I have family to feed. I am an immigrant with no help from parents. I gotta do what I gotta do.