I've been in IT for a long time it started out just building computers and tinkering to starting a business selling them and building custom and finally when competition and availability made it impossible to make a profit doing small business and personal IT stuff, I took a job in the mid-90s work in the school system where I learned a lot of technologies that I've never seen before and got to work across multiple campuses with wide area networking technologies the transition to email storage optimization etc, which prepared me for working in the Enterprise and developing many admin skills that I would not have gotten until I reached the level of admin in a different type of organization or a smaller company it department with a single data center or server room.

I then took a job as a phone tech support engineer for an Enterprise backup software company and work my way up in that vendor to high availability email archiving and other technologies and moved out of support into a product management consulting and marketing roles during my time there and while I was at that company for 13 years my salary increase 5x during the time I was there from the time I started till until I left. I also had a considerable amount of stock and 401K growth.

I left that job in 2011 and started another company for myself. Nobody that would have been possible without me moving to a vendor to develop the Enterprise skills at the level I achieved, nor would I have had the opportunities to work with Enterprise customers in the Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 space, the federal government, foreign governments, and others, in helping them choose and implement complex disaster recovery solutions for their most mission critical applications.

I was able to make great money, travel the world,.speak at vendor events, and become a trusted resource for some of the largest companies and governments in the world and I never held the title of senior administrator or IT manager, etc.

My recommendation is take a look at what it is you really like to do and what it is you're really good at. If what you'd like to do require some certifications or some new skills, start working on that. Look at the types of jobs available in Enterprise software and hardware companies in the cloud, virtualization, networking, or security space and get certified in the things in high demand for your chosen direction.

If cost is a factor entertaining a certifications, I would recommend taking a lesser job at a company that has the position or career track that you want and let them pay for you to achieve the certifications because they will. From there you can easily move up or laterally in any direction you want although sometimes companies will make you stay in a new position for at least a year.

In all likelihood, your chosen company will pay you at least what you're making now and possibly more even for the lesser positions. The benefits will definitely be better and you'll have the opportunity to get equity as well as better retirement matching and way better insurance than you've ever had before.