Same situation for me. Been doing it for a long time now. Just remember to take time out to spend with the kids. Sure, the old adage that they grow up so fast is true, but also spending that time refreshes you. It will also ensure that you retain the dogged persistence to reach that goal.
Bitcoin is a protocol. There is nothing stopping the UN from creating their own currency using the Bitcoin protocol with all the characteristics they require of a reserve currency.
A more sensible approach would be to take advantage of TradeHill's "dark pools" which enable very large BTC transactions to take place outside of the public order book.
Not every online transaction requires a chargeback. Perhaps donating to your favourite artist, author, charity would be easier in Bitcoin. And would mean you don't have to keep careful track of your spending to avoid huge interest rates from the card company.
You can use a Simplified Payment Verification (SPV) client like MultiBit (see http://multibit.org). From scratch it takes about 5 minutes to start using Bitcoin.
Interesting tool. The concept of high entropy from passphrases rather than passwords will be very useful for deterministic Bitcoin wallets (see https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Deterministic_wallet).
Solve the Time Problem. As in "I'm a developer with a great idea but no time to do it".
Perhaps if someone has a bit of spare cash left over from the day job they could pay someone else to build their project for them (subject to stringent code review). Sort of like Rentacoder but more fine grained.