This, to me, is a bit of a difficult bind you find yourself in
I have been a professional programmer now for a bit more than twenty years (damn!!). One thing I have noticed about programmers is that it is a bit of an art form and if you don't have the spark, you may end up just a mediocre programmer. I knew a lot of people in the 90s who got into programming because it was lucrative. I.e., not something they loved.
I think this is probably true with a lot of careers.
I think it was somewhere around 1975 (I was 13 at the time) that my father bought me a Texas Instruments console computer. It hooked up to my black and white TV, was basically just a keyboard with a processor and a few ports to plug things into. The only way I had to store data once the console was turned off was to record it on an audio cassette. When I loaded the data the next time I turned it on, I could literally hear the digital information being loaded audibly.
I used to stay up all hours of the night figuring out how to write programs.
Ah, those were the days
I've never been without some form of computer since then.
After graduating from high school, and after a too-long abortive attempt to get a computer science degree (we actually learned punch cards my second year - no way!), which then turned into an abortive attempt to get a degree in Latin and then English Lit, I entered the work force as a driver for a construction company. Heh.
While I was there, I wrote payroll and inventory programs when I wasn't driving a truck and they made me a draftsman (by hand, not computerized yet) and I worked at that for awhile.
I ended up working for an engineering company as a draftsman, finally got into CAD drafting (AutoCAD) where I ended up, once again, writing software for the engineering company in the form of AutoLISP scripts to make the whole process of designing building easier for us poor draftsmen that had to do some many things to make the out-of-the-box application of the time function efficiently.
I then went to work for an offshore drilling company doing temporary work, putting all of their hard-copy documentation into an indexed electronic form. While I was doing that, I got to talking to the manager of Purchasing, who told me the problems they had with people traveling all of the time and not being able to physically sign material requisitions which caused a big problem in getting supplies to rigs. In my spare time (once again), I wrote an MR system that used email to distribute packets of data to email in-boxes of the people who needed to sign requisitions and send the data back with their electronic signatures.
IT manager came to see me shortly after that and offered me a job as a programmer. I was the happiest person in the world. I felt like someone who made millions playing football - I couldn't believe someone was actually going to pay me to do the thing I loved most in the world. I ended up as manager of software development for that company and worked there for ten years until we were bought out and I decided to go out on my own.
The point is - happiness in life comes not only from family and friends, but also from doing something that you are truly happy with. Otherwise, no matter the family and friends, it can bring a lot of misery into your life if you get locked into something that you don't like. I know you said you like computers, at least as a hobbyist, but there can be an awful lot of crap that you have t put up with as well, particularly clients who simply don't understand software development - be they clients in your own business, or department managers in a company you're working for, or even your own boss who wants you to do things in a way that you just KNOW is going to cause havoc down the line.
I can't really advise you which course to take without being you - it's too big a decision.
But as some have mentioned, both careers would be great mixed together. I'd concentrate on what I love first and then what may help me add to that enjoyment later.
The way you talk about economics (which, I've also started to pick up recently as a hobbyist) is the way I remember feeling about programming starting some 35 years ago.
