That's not a meaningful question. Money is simply a means of
measuring and facilitating trade among people in order to get
the actual things they value. "How important is money" is them
like asking "How important is importance?" or "How valubale is
value?"
> Would you take a job that had little effect on other extropian
> type goals but made you millions in a few years?
If it makes me millions, then it /will/ have an effect on
extropian goals; namely, mine. It will pay for my cryonic
suspension and that of any willing family. It will pay for my
web bandwidth to publish extropian ideas. It will pay for any
modifications to my body, by house, my car, may computers, or
other things that assist my goals. That's what it's for.
> Can more be accomplished by funding research (or politics) than
> by direct involvement?
Funding /is/ involvement. Money makes it easier for those
people with the most skills at, say, cryonics, to be hired by
those whose talents can be more productive elsewhere. Money
and trade make the system more efficient, by making things like
human talent and vision more fungible.
> What sort of tradeoffs do you see between time spent making money
> and time spent doing other things? How much money is plenty?
If you are making money, you are by definition doing what you
can to achieve whatever your goals are. There is no such thing
as "enough" or "plenty"; they are menaingless abstractions.