You've no real need for Trad characters on the mainland unless you're doing historical research, or you want to write in Cantonese (and many Cantonese speakers can't actually write it); otherwise, they are used in only in Taiwan/Macau/HK and by some overseas Chinese communities. Singapore and Malaysia both mandate Simplified for their Chinese speakers as well.
Many of the Simplified characters are derived by regular rules from the Traditional characters, which helps if you're interested in learning both as I am, since on my trips there, I usually spend in both Guangzhou and HK.
You might also gain some perspective by considering the fact that 800900 million people write using Simplified, and maybe 1/10 of that number use Traditional.