Actually, what you're getting is a familiar that's a heck of a lot more powerful in combat and less useful out of it. Plus, it does kick you in the XP jewels when it dies. I believe it costs a whopping 100 gold to replace, in fact. The
Unearthed Arcana listing says nothing whatsoever about getting familiar abilities added on top of what's listed, and it explicitly says that you do not gain the ability to summon a familiar when using that variant. Ergo, replaces completely.
Likewise, it isn't a cohort. It's pretty obviously modeled on the familiar ability of most wizards, but rejiggered to be substantially more useful in the ways that having a powerful skeleton warrior around can be useful. It also isn't an independent NPC like a cohort - it has no Int, no will of its own, and you can replace it with a quick ritual at the drop of a hat. Ergo, no cohort point buy and no cohort gold, since it could hardly have been off adventuring without you before it became attracted to your banner.
I've used the ability variant myself, in exactly the way that I'm having you do it (save that I rolled 3d6 for the stats), and had quite satisfactory results. That skeleton is a pretty tough customer, believe it or not.
It's not a big deal with the document. But you have to expect me to take a while to get around to finishing it. If I have the choice of reading 25 pages of stuff you've dug up or 25 pages of reading that I'll be expected to know tomorrow, you can't expect to win. It keeps getting pushed down on my "things to do" list, but I'll work my way through it eventually.
