Don't the Chase United Visa Cards earn one redeemable mile (RDM) per dollar of general spend? Isn't that worth about 1%? If so, this would reduce the opportunity cost by ~$2K, to "only" $1-3K for UA MileagePlus™ Premier Gold membership.

I understand RDM are an unstable, declining "currency", subject to inflation. Yet "one and done" for status could also be an important consideration for a small business owner.

I agree that microoptimization (spending at lot of time maximizing rewards among numerous categories on multiple cards) is beyond the scope of this discussion.