Can someone talk me off the desire to re-earn 1K or help me see any benefits I'm missing. I've been 1K for the last three years because of work which recently changed and doesn't have me flying nearly as often and I'm not on track to re-earn this year. I put some numbers together to see what I need to do over the next 7 months if so. I do have to travel on my own $ to ORD from DEN 1X per month though for work, shoot for ~1-2 international trips/year and ~4-5 domestic trips with my family (wife and kid who turns 2 this year)/year so I'm going to be buying her a seat moving forward/would like the free e+
1K will cost me max $9700 this year and 18 more flights.
Platinum will cost me max $3700 this year and 0 more flights. (in addition to what's already booked) and I could achieve this just by upgrading a few of my upcoming flights or more than likely will accomplish this with one more international trip I will probably be taking.
I could pay for probably 15+ upgrades with that $9700 and not worry about will I clear or not. Seems like the biggest no brainer of this and I should just TLDR/end the thread here.
All of this as long as no awesome PQP mileage run deal doesn't come up. I flew to Dublin last year on AC for $1200 in PE to get me over the mark which was worth it.
I have always been able to use all my plus points and I get a fair share of CPU's. I don't value 1K as high as some of the blogs do though. $8000 or so in value which all I'm losing dropping to Platinum is my free snacks, early boarding, better upgrade and standby positioning, plus points, and the 1k desk. All the other additional benefits stay relatively the same.
The 1K desk has been one of my favorite perks and gotten me out of many a weird jam. e.g when a partner upgrade on Lufthansa lost my lap infant ticket while we were in Europe last month, or the hotels they've been willing to pay for when I was stranded with Max9 cancelations, fixing funky issues with flight credits on my plans that are constantly fluid etc. Pre boarding and snacks are a nice to have but not something I would necessarily pay for on my own.
