Originally Posted by jsloan

What benefits do you hope to get from 1K? Yes, there are a lot of 1Ks, and yes, it can be challenging to use PlusPoints -- but PlusPoints from C to F on NH may be an option and seem to clear more regularly.

That said, if you're worried about the calculations of reaching 1K organically, I don't think you're going to like the half-million-spending approach either, because UA has limits on the number of qualifying points you can earn per card. You'd need a whole wallet full of credit cards to reach 1K without flying (although note that you need a minimum of four UA-operated segments to reach any status level with UA). You could get 10K PQP from a Club card, 6K from a Quest card, and then you'd have to make up the rest 1K PQP at a time... and I think you'd run out of cards. (Now, that'd take care of itself with a couple of business class UA flights, but you were asking about pre-attaining 1K via spend).