I am a hyper optimizer on credit card spend (to the chagrin of the Mrs.), but I also meticulously track my status progress and have a very clear view of my projected flights travel and this year, I'm fairly confident that I'm gaining value by shifting about 20k of non-United spend to my Quest card for the PQP I need to make 1k. That's spend that would have earned an extra 10k Chase UR points (Freedom Unlimited 1.5x). I get more value out of miles (IN to Oz for my family for 100k), so I always transfer. Accordingly, 1k status is worth far more than 10k miles for me (3 RT Pluspoint upgrades to Sydney are probably worth in the region of $25,000), so I would argue that you can't really judge whether someone is spending efficiently without knowing their circumstances.