Advice / Recommendations Needed

I have a small WordPress site that the family is using to help keep people up to date on an illness in the family. I am using the following plugins currently:
* RegisterPlus – wanted to enable users to select their own password as well as complete some additional profile fields. This seems to be working out well.
* Subscribe2 – Want to allow users to receive post updates via email. The problem with this is that the user cannot select a frequency to receive the emails. It is set globally. Some users do not want an email for every post while others do. Some just want a daily update.
* MembersOnly – I am using this as we want most of the site to be private. Not sure if I can have a mix of private and public pages based on the post category.

I am also using a few miscellaneous other plugins.

I would like to have the ability to assign users to more than the Registered role. For example, I would like to create roles for Family, Family Friends, and Work Friends. These would each mirror the base subscriber role but would have the ability for the administration to assign which post categories they can see.

Any recommendations or suggestions how to set up a good site for this type of use would be appreciated. I am not apposed to paying for a pluging(s) that would optimize this process and do the particular functionality better.

Thanks