Hello Mike L -
Understanding color management, for me, was like learning Photo Shop. I had to acquire the knowledge almost one fragment at a time, over many months. Calibrating the monitor was easy, and I think it is probably easy for most people. It's also a critical first step, without which none of the subsequent steps mean anything. Printer profiling and the use of various color spaces is more complicated, and it took me much longer.
My choice was to stay with one set of modalities for almost all of my "work" (I'm just an amateur, and my photos are made for me, family, and friends - but I do care greatly about color accuracy, exposure, and the like). My choice was to shoot RAW, edit only in Photo Shop using Adobe RGB color space, and print through Qimage - though printing with Photo Shop would have worked almost as easily.
Profiling the printer was the hard part, for me. I used various DataColor products for that, starting many years before DataColor had its present name. Because of unresolvable support difficulties with my copy of SpyderPRINT 4.2.3, I've moved away from DataColor now, but many others still have excellent luck with DataColor products.
Bill Hansen
Ithaca NY USA