Orville,
Welcome to the wonderful world of flying.
You can't charge people, as SD said, you can only share costs. In a four-seater aircraft, this means you could only pay 25% of hire charges. Aerial photography is a grey area, but probably illegal; someone will come on here and say for certain....and probably criticise me for not knowing for sure! You CAN drop parachutists and tow gliders. This is about the only sort of free flying that's legal with a PPL.
However, you can also save on costs by buying a share in an aircraft, or converting to microlights or some PFA types which are far cheaper to run. There are lots of threads on here about this, and you have plenty of time to do the research. In any event, it certainly needn't cost you what you're paying now.
As for your other question, if you're happy with your flying school, I'd suggest you stay there. Why go to the US? What's the rush? Does it matter if you get your PPL next year, or even later? Especially if money is tight.
As for "moving on to other qualifications", you don't have to. I know reading PPRuNe you can get the impression that if you don't have an IMC and night rating you'll be for ever groundbound, but this is not the case. My feeling would be - chill out and accept that training may take a while due to the good old British weather, get your PPL, then enjoy it and see what happens.