Yes, you wont pay $30k if you don't get a decent paying job - you'll just waste your time.
The time is a cost, not a benefit. If you're choosing between spending $30k and nine months to get an education, or $32k and four years, the first one is obviously and vastly superior to the second.
You may be thinking that the education you get at the CSU is better than what you get at Lambda School, but "higher price, better product" is the opposite of the argument you actually made.
Saving time may be great anyway. You have a high-cost product and an ultra-high-cost product. The fact that one of them is more valuable isn't enough to decide which one is a better purchase.
Financially you’re wildly better off attending Lambda School, and I think you’d be hard-pressed to make an argument that the four years of university provide a vastly superior education to a year of Lambda School and three years working as a software engineer.
I don't think so. This is again making the big assumption that you get the same outcome and the same jobs coming out of Lambda School. Might be, might not be, but so far you just claimed grandiose properties without any argument behind them (and changing from comment to comment).
A year of college is enough to get an internship, and an internship is enough to get a job in many cases.
Hope the car helped - from your LinkedIn it looks like you were able to get back on your feet.