Most personal finance content is about cutting expenses. That's not an accident. Cutting expenses is easy to write about, applies to almost everyone, and feels actionable. It also has a hard limit that income growth doesn't.
Expenses have a floor
You can trim a lot from a budget: subscriptions, eating out, a nicer car than you need. At some point you hit rent or a mortgage, food, insurance, utilities, and the essentials of caring for the people who depend on you. That floor is real, and once you're near it, there's not much left to cut. Diminishing returns set in fast.
I think of this as a scarcity versus abundance mindset. If the only lever you ever pull is how cheaply you can live, you hit a point where it stops making sense. A lot of your costs are fixed: you need to live somewhere near your job, food costs what it costs, you need a car, and buying the cheapest version of everything usually costs you more in the long run. There's only so much room on that side of the equation.
Income has no ceiling
There's no equivalent floor on the income side. A raise, a promotion, a better job, a second income stream, a business, none of these have a hard cap the way expenses have a hard floor. The lever keeps working long after the expense lever has run out of room. Getting better at your skill and commanding more in the marketplace is where the real room is, provided you have the discipline not to let the extra income just raise your lifestyle instead of opening up money to invest.
Unit economics applies to your own finances the same way it applies to a business. Every dollar has a cost and a return. Once the cost side is optimized, the return side is where the growth actually comes from.
When to make the switch
If your budget still has obvious waste: unused subscriptions, high-interest debt, spending that doesn't reflect what you actually value, cut it first. That's the highest-leverage move available and it's usually fast.
Once the budget is genuinely lean, the next unit of progress almost never comes from finding another $50 to trim. It comes from negotiating a raise, changing jobs, building a skill that's worth more in the market, or adding an income stream. That's a harder, slower lever to pull. It's also the one with no ceiling on it.
Cut the obvious waste first. It's fast and it's real. But don't mistake a lean budget for a finished plan. Expenses have a floor you'll eventually hit. Income doesn't. At some point, the higher-leverage move is growing what comes in, not shrinking what goes out.