Confused Boomer, Help Needed Please

[PolloPolo]

I really need some help from one of the degree gurus. I’ve REALLY screwed up with my classes in the past but I’m ready to finally earn a degree. I’ve been working in finance with the federal government for over a decade and make a good salary but I hate it. I want to get into a data science/analytics/programming related career field ASAP.  

Location: Virginia 
Age: 43 (yeah I’m old as hell and kind of late to finally earn a degree/change careers) 
Degree wanted: TESU’s B.S. D.S. and Analytics/another B.S. degree from TESU or another institution if it makes more sense to do so. 

I have a different take. From what I've read so far you want a degree

1) to pivot to DS from zero
2) and you want it asap due to age and family
3) Finance not a very big concern with tuition reimbursement and/or military benefits available
4) You had taken (but somehow disappeared) statistics.com courses in Python and R

With that in mind, I'd suggest going directly for Colorado's MS-DS program.
Most people your age choose TESU BA or BSBA to tick the box for promotion, i.e. they already work in the field. Not in your case. A BA-CS from TESU might not even get you an interview as you had zero DS experience and the BA-CS program is not remotely ML-rigorous.
If I were you I would go straight to studying everything DS instead of spending the next year studying subjects that are not DS relevant and a Liberal Arts Capstone that is very time-consuming. You should spend time on kaggle.com, not study.com
The only caveat is that if you set your sights on GT's OMSCS you do need a bachelor's degree. You are correct about UT-Austin though. Their Admissions is super focused on for-grade academics and your cumulative GPA from all colleges attended is well below 3.0 the bare minimum which does not look good

"Do I need a bachelor's degree to be admitted to the University of Colorado online MS-DS program?
No. This program uses performance-based admissions, which means you must complete 3 pathway courses for credit with a 3.0 GPA average or better. This demonstrates your proficiency and allows you to be admitted to the program.
https://www.colorado.edu/program/data-sc...rsera/faqs"

Yep, degree ASAP. Age and because I really do not like my current career field. Finance isn't a huge concern, I have a good salary and my wife just became a nurse practitioner so we're doing pretty good. 

I was just going through that dual BA-CS/BSBA-CIS wiki link and noticed the lack of programming/ML/data science courses. I'm currently following this data science roadmap: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/data-s...g-roadmap/

I'm doing the Coursea Python for Everybody Specialization now to get a good understanding of programming with Python. I want to concentrate on Python, SQL, Git/GitHub, mathematics for DS, and ML/AI. Learning Python is really enjoyable for me, so far lol. I'm excited about continuing to learn and become a semi-competent programmer. 

I read about UC Boulder's M.S. non-bachelors degree requirement and don't really understand how that works. Always thought a bachelors is required for a masters. I guess I could just jump into UC Boulder's masters program then finish up a bachelors from TESU later. 

P.S. Hopefully my issues with quoting people isn't a bad omen for my future in DS/info tech.