No, the status miles don't roll over. You'll have to start from scratch in 2016.

Divide $500 by the number of times you'll be able to use the status before Feb 2017 and figure out if the value of benefits is there.

Also, for $500, you can get up to 30 segments on domestic LO flights if you want to earn status that way :-). Getting 18k miles for $500 will be certainly harder.