Hold a meeting
 

If you are missing more than 2 nights to get whatever status you are after, just schedule a meeting at a SHS or similar. That's about $100-150 total, maybe less. You get 10 elite qualification nights!

Maybe you can find $50 a night, but with tax, the meeting method to get status is easier and less expensively if you need more than 2 nights.

That's the gist of "$800 for Plat Status" conversations.

El President: I'm 40 Qualifying nights from GOLD so for $400 essentially I can upgrade to a gold status? Although I don't really see that benefiting me much

Unless you're going to be staying a lot more next year, probably not. Gold gives some extras over Silver, but if you're going to use it 10-20 times, probably not worth even the $400. The $100 meetings for 10 EQNs come in really handy when you are at, for example, 45 nights and want to move from Silver to Platinum for $300, or you're at 67 nights and want to move to Platinum for $100.