Can't find another step up...

[TheIronStar]

I work in software development in a financial services firm. When I got the job, I believe it had been due pretty much to nepotism, and it was the only response I ever have gotten in any job search I've done.

Since I believed in work-life balance and work-life separation over the past few years and did not actively spend my nights brushing up more skills during off-work time, I'm afraid I'll forever truly never be a market-rate developer as the market arms-race continues. I've been looking into other career paths, but I can't seem to find anything that's pays as well and doesn't destroy any hope of work-life balance as well.

A co-worker of mine realized she was in the same position (her IT skills were actually getting worse over time), and switched out and went to law school; I'm happy for her, but I'm not sure if I could handle such a thing.

I'm looking into MBAs mainly out of inertia, since it's the next step if I were to stay in this industry; but I personally find finance to be dry, and with today's market efficiency, I wonder whether it's all a shell game and arms race wherein fewer and fewer people with increasingly arcane qualifications are offered increasingly fewer chances to grab increasingly tiny actual advantages.

I've also have had bad experiences with American universities' professional-degrees, having found that their career centers are worthless wastes, and that the degrees don't blast open doors all around; I've even been reading more and more that even advanced degrees such as MBAs are so deficient that they derive their value from alumni networking and selection effects rather than deriving massive value directly from the education.

It's painful because I don't know anything else which isn't a step down; I like the money I'm making now, but don't know anything else wherein I can step up and still change careers and locations (I'd like to move away from here, possibly to another country perhaps) and not burn myself out.

What does one do to find genuine leads in this situation?