the main gripe is that people cant really spend their funds until the chain is uptodate. which can be days-weeks to set it up

if only there was a smart dev that could think of some simple solution..
like

an uptodate UTXO set of (lets say current blockheight minus 1) gets its own hash. and that hash is set in the current block data.
making the UTXO set of 1confirms+ verifiable as part of block checks

thus people can then have their wallet grab a very recent UTXO set FIRST. so they can actually go ahead and spend their funds, the same day.
after all sending out a tx using the UTXO set wont hurt the network. if it contains a input that is actually spend or non existent it wont get relayed/accepted into a new block anyway..

...
this way it is also good for light wallet users that just want the UTXO set have some faith that the UTXO set has some checks and validations by the network.

and then it makes downloading the blockchain if they want to part of the networks full validation/data archiving, more of a background feature..
thus then alleviates the requirement for some people to not have to wait 2 weeks or so to download the blockchain before they are upto date enough just to spend funds.