And hello patersoj, welcome to Flyertalk and the British Airways forum. Congratulations on your new relationship, your Ruby card and indeed for joining us here, may we see more of you.

I think there's a case for saying that Silver works particularly well if you are in WT, since things like the lounge, fast track and the Avios uplift makes it more worthwhile if you are down the back on a regular basis. I'd also suggest you carefully follow some of the ideas here so that you don't end quite so far back in the future, there are ways and means of keeping costs down and flying WTP or Club World.

Now you are 160 TPs short. Cost effectively it is best to do it in the US, where a bit of playing around with First on AA or US, booked more than 2 weeks out, should bring the cost per TP below £2, or even £1 if you go further afield to the Caribbean or Hawaii. There's a whole TP thread elsewhere in the forum for more details, but you may be looking at something like WAS-BOS via PHL or NYC, which would get you 240 TPs in First and can be done in a day for approximately £296. Even better is to make a virtue of it, take The Bloke and have a few days there. You don't need that many TPs, so there are probably cheaper options to get the lower TP requirement.

The other option - if your flight to Washington is a revenue fare - is to cash upgrade to WTP to get some extra TPs that way.

Good luck!