Wirelessly posted (probably driving while typing: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0) BlackBerry8830/4.2.2 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/105)

You have over 750k worth of credit card miles and are purchasing y tickets and hoping to upgrade? I would use these miles on c tickets to dxb or at least to europe then y to dxb. As far as elite status, unless you chabge your flying habits, 10-15 trips is not very elite. Check out the AA platinum challenge sticky in the aa forum for an easy elite option. As far as hotels go, you can easily buy $600 worth of priority club points and redeem them at their point saver properties. This works out to prepaying for 6 x $50 hotel room nights and getting pc platinum for free. As for your car rentals, I would open a bmi account (4500 or 9000 free miles see bmi forum) and then credit your hertz rerntals there as their miles never expire. Alternatively, open a vs account and credit 1000-2000 miles per rental with more partner options.

In order to play this game, you will have to change your travel patterns somewhat, but not your entire life.