Newbie question: Spending miles before achieving status
 

If you are in the process of earning status miles, does it hurt you to spend some of them for an award flight before you cross the threshold? Are they counted as status miles even if they've been already spent?

No problem.

Status is based strictly on the miles/points earned, not what's banked. Once they're earned, they're yours to use at any time, without any impact on achieving status.

You don't actually spend status miles. What you earn (on flights) are both status miles and redeemable miles at the same time. What you redeem are the redeemable miles, but the status miles stay there (they can't be redeemed). On the other hand, status miles reset to zero each year while redeemable miles don't reset (unless you let them expire).

On non-flight activity (credit cards, airline shopping malls, airline dining programs, hotel partners, car rental partners, etc), you only earn redeemable miles and (usually) no status miles at all.