Cag I'm so happy for you and your family as I was for Girlie last year when she got her own place. We all deserve to live somewhere we're safe, comfortable and happy.
Em definitely go for the study. It sounds like a win win situation and much less torture because you've the experience built up. I often do online courses just because they're interesting. I'd love to do a masters just because and my old college offered one a few years ago which I seriously debated but it'd have be €5k and I might never have used it! Luckily I didn't because my job went on short time hours shortly after & I'd have found it difficult to pay for.
Yesterday I was up for 21.5 hours, first day of our holidays. I'll try think of the spends, mostly food related 
when I'm extraordinarily tired I eat more! I think the body can do with little sleep or little food but not little of both, has anyone else found this?
Breakfast at airport €7.95, H got his & dcs
Snacks on plane €5.50
Breakfast at F & B £35 incl tip
£8 on locker to storage luggage during day at Edinburgh bus station, equivalent at Waverley train station £62.50, well worth the walk to bus station
Ice cream @ Tesco £6.35
Taxis £16
Dinner £50? H paid with joint funds so I'm not sure
Sainsbury's basic shop for week incl a book for me 
£49
£523.24 on new accommodation (more about this in a minute)
£20 deposit on iron
£9 towel rental (gave me 4 for price of 3)
We had paid for accommodation with booking.com in November & flights & parking & airport buses too.
Problem #1
parking entry didn't work so we'd to take a fresh ticket, no one on duty at end of intercom until 8am, this was 4.30am, emailed & it's resolved already.
Problem #2
DC's boarding passes wouldn't work, turns out the seats we'd booked were changed by airline & they put both adults at front of plane & both dc at back of plane for some unknown reason. We sat one adult one child at each end of plane while there were two full empty rows behind us? Email not drafted yet to complain, going to hold fire until return journey to see what happens there. I sat with ds, he cried at end of journey because he wanted to go home, air hostess offered to take him thinking he'd want to stay with me, he jumped at the chance 
Problem #3 by far the biggest & outing if you know me
We were due to get a pin code for key safe for accommodation by email an hour before check in.
H is bad with numbers so he locked himself out of his phone at about 4am, so we only had mine for photos & directions & the like all day. I'd 18% left by time we got to accommodation.
No pin on check in time so I waited then I emailed to be told that it was in the earlier email it wasn't, then I rang and phone number rang out. Then email said he didn't have record of our booking so I stated booking ref # which was on his earlier email & date he took payment, then next email said refund was on it's way & booking.com would be on to me, now done to 4% then I emailed to ask what was happening & he blamed a leak at property, my phone went dead, we moved us 5 cases into a nearby restaurant ordered dinner & I put my phone on charge.
I emailed asking for proof of refund, nothing back.
I searched booking.com for alternative accommodation. There was some available. This gave me hope, I stayed cool and calm and reasonable although my right hand was shaking. H lost it, threw in towel and suggested booking flights home. I said I wasn't going home, this wasn't our mistake.
Booking.com offered alternative 3.3km out of city, I declined saying it was too far, we'd spent at least an hour a day on buses instead of being in walking distance of places.
I suggested alternatives and then they did, we found an acceptable one but the story got worse. We had to pay for it upfront & get refunded difference by booking.com who would retrieve from original landlord. I didn't bring credit cards with me as everything was prepaid & brought cash for spends. I got details for one cc off my google drive and found the expiry date stored on amazon & could remember ccv but our payment would have to be split between this card & joint account. Booking.com rang new landlord to check if this was possible & discovered that as they'd no booking they decided to do work on property.
Back to drawing board & I suggested a place, it's actually over £200 cheaper & I could make payment from joint account. I did this while I was on hold to booking.com. They didn't seem hopeful for compensation for inconvenience from original landlord, said to keep receipts of costs that happened as a result of change to accommodation, we forgot taxi receipt last night 
I got one for towels alright but I want him to pay for more than that! He's not getting stung for increased accommodation costs either cos it was cheaper. 4 hours of stress from start to finish. Tipped restaurant £10 for their help, we were there charging phone & eating for almost 2 hours & they were busy.
New accommodation is not the apartment style holiday we wanted.
It's student accommodation with two individual rooms ensuite in shared flat with communal kitchen, it's lovely but there's another family here too, we went out to shop thinking there was no one else here & would watch tv when we came back & the other family were there when we came in, no biggie to me and ds slept pretty much straight away while I read & used my phone to let my family know what had happened. He couldn't do this because his phone is locked
It's not our own place like planned though. Will draft a complaints email when I figure out all the differences it has made to our holiday.
Are ye still with me