I made E50 by spending less than $9K -- with a third of those points coming on one YYJ-SFO-SYD-BNE trip on UA. (If I had made three of those trips, and nothing else, I could have hit E50 for less than $5K.)

I am fascinated by the wide variations in spending, and of course it raises one of the questions that pops back from time to time: What is the cheapest way to get to SE? (And now, to E75, E50 and so on.)