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Time is what you make of it. I work for a living - for someone else, have done so for the last 35 years. Yes time is a luxury and the reason I turned to finding a way to remotely/robotically control my observatory - to make more efficient use of the time that I have. It took 5 years to save up for the current scope (4" then 8" then 10" then 14", selling the smaller as part payment on the next one in line and doing what work I could with what I had), 6 months to build and dial in the observatory and setup. Yes I was helped along the way with some grant money to buy a second hand CCD camera - and it was my 'sticktoitiveness' that got me that grant.
Lost count of the number of all nighters I pulled on the smaller scopes in the early days before the observatory - still had to go to work that same day and in the end prayed for cloudy nights to give me a break to get some sleep.
Yes - it became an obsession but at that time I believed it was warranted - I was doing NEO followup astrometry for southern targets. We couldn't rely on the professional observatories since, at that time, there were none observing further south than -30.
Where there is a will - there is a way. You do not need to be independently wealthy - you just need a goal and the desire to see it through no matter how long it takes.
Cheers
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