Hello,

Because it would cost a lot of money, and I am undergoing a lot of academic-personal related stress, I will not be able to attend an important gathering of hard-to-reach academics in my field. I am not sure when the next one will be, but I am so gutted. I am worried that I will be missing out on crucial information/updates for my thesis. :( Yet, at the same time, I am drained (physical tiredness and emotional dilemmas)
Is that such a bad deal?

This won't matter, you will have other opportunities. You can always check the program and see if there are any interesting abstracts that are relevant.

I wouldn't worry. If your thesis is based on the current state of the published literature for your field of study, then it should be relatively easy to incorporate any new publications into your review. Depending on your discipline, it is unlikely that someone will publish a paper that completely supercedes your work.

And there will be other opportunies, as the previous poster said.

It's really frustrating to feel like you're missing out conferences, but as others have said, it's probably not something to worry about.

One thing you could do, though, is have a scan through of the programme and if there are any talks you're really interested in or relevant to your work, you could always consider emailing the speaker and asking if they would be willing to share their abstract/presentation/summary of key points? Approach with caution of course as people can be very protective of their work for obvious and understandable reasons, but if they're presenting at a conference, then by implication they are making some of that research available anyway. That way, you might not have to miss out on everything, and you could have the opportunity to impress an academic by showing them how interested you are in their research. Networking doesn't have to be done face-to-face...