My goals in taking these courses are twofold:

a) Enhancing my resume prior to eventual job applications in the software engineering realm.

b) Setting myself up for possible future graduate school applications for an MS in CS.

For background, I am a working professional with a humanities education. I started coding seriously about a year ago and have grown quite proficient. I plan to continue my programming education over the coming year and build a portfolio, but I am also interested in doing some formal CS education. I love coding and find myself wishing every day that I had discovered it when I was still in university. Now, I am working on my coding education full-time and will continue on that path for the next year.

Although I am increasingly confident in my coding skills, I suspect that I'll have a better shot at a career transition if I can gain a solid foundation in core CS principles as well. That is why I am investing time and energy into online CS courses with EdX, Coursera, etc. The question is whether I ought to be investing money as well. My main interest in the material is intellectual and I want to continue doing it regardless, but I recognize that future employers and/or graduate school may require some "proof" that I actually learned the material (beyond just portfolio projects).

For reference, I calculated out the cost of buying "verified" certificates for all of the required courses and it comes out to $1,712, depending on course selection.

Thanks everyone for your thoughts.