Just wondering, what's the least amount of $$ you've spent and still acheived elite status?

I'm on my way to CO elite silver (for the first time)

Several years ago I did a gold challenge on AA for around $300. One trip US to UK on a cheap ticket and got AA Gold for rest of the year and the next. The Gold and Platinum challenges are a great perk on AA. See the AA forum for more info. You can get staus quickly and cheaply if you do it right.

This year I made gold with AA for the first time... cost about $1000.
LAX-DFW-LAX without AADER
DFW-LHR-DFW during AADER
DFW-SNA-DFW during AADER

Voila, Gold. Had hoped to make it to plat with other trips, but ended up on UA and QF for the remaining trips scheduled this year.

Starting off 2009 with a ORD-IAD-LHR-IAD-ORD ($222ai) trip on UA to get a head start, but really need the same on AA, since DFW is my hub.

I'm really bummed that Kayak and AA ended their partnership. It was such a valuable tool to get those miles to add up more quickly.

WalruSara - with that amount of flying and a PLT challenge on AA you could have made PLT. Check out the AAdvantage forum for info.

You can credit your QF flights to AAdvantage and get more miles and points for them (except certain cheap economy fares).

Most elites would say zero since their company paid for most of the travel.

No kidding. I'm sure that's the answer that OP was looking for.

For me it was approx $700 in mileage runs for a free companion pass on WN, which is about as elite as it gets on Southwest

In general the quickest and cheapest way to elite status is to do an AA challenge. In prior years, you used to be able to get Gold status for $400, the price of two transcons, or Plat for $800. Without the AADER promo. These days the transcons are a bit pricier. And you can't do it every year.

Actually, this is one of those nonsense questions that begs for a non-answer. If someone has never flown on an airline, and never intends to, then why try to get status on them? If one has flown on that airline, then those flights will count toward status and the added cost to get status would be less. If one intends to fly, why not wait until those flights occur and have them count toward status? Somewhere, there may be someone deranged enough to qualify for status purely as a lark (and, if so, they will undoubtedly post here), but I doubt it.

For me, I got Platinum status once on AA (up from Gold) for $300, but I had already done substantial flying on AA that year. Theoretically, the cheapest way to status is with segment runs (I figured 3 years ago that I could make Executive Platinum on AA for $1700 without any other flying, it's probably up somewhat now, but that involved 17 days of 18 hour-per-day flying, if I wasn't crazy starting it I would be crazy by the time I finished it.

What makes sense is doing a bit extra to get status or higher status. If you normally qualify on segments, get creative on your routings and you can add 25% to your segment count. If you qualify on miles, you can add 25% to your mileage. But if so doing won't bring you to at least 80% of the amount required, I would just forget it.

WalruSara -

Can you explain to us how you got the ORD-LHR $222 ai - dates/tools, etc? And is that fare still available? I would also love to get a head-start for 2009!

I passed the 25,000 MQM threshold on Delta this year by spending only $400 cash. A $70 one-way MHT-GSO; a $180 GSO-LAS r/t and a $150 GSO-MHT r/t. Of course, I had a bump-a-palooza during this time, which were redeemed on 3 GSO-LAS, a GSO-LAX and a GSO-SFO round-trip. But hey, that was $1500 extra in my pocket!

I'll make Platinum Medallion this year after spending around $3000 (before vouchers) - inclusive of vouchers, it came out to be around $6000.

$1000 I think is a fair amount in any of the alliances. (for mid-level gold/etc.)

The fare is now gone, but you can read about it here:
http://flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=864207

I got AA EXP for about 2100$ with the help of AADER.

Also this year I already have BMI Gold and UA PremEx, working towards LH SEN renewal.

For Star Alliance I just spent about 3000$ until now but with lots of cheap PL tickets as well

Exactly $888 for me to get silver on NW

You might be very surprised to find out how many of us pay for all of our own travel.

I'm 1K on my dime strictly for pleasure.

I probably travel 40-50K in a year and make up the rest with $1500 in MRs.

But I still think volkswankin is correct. Yes, many of us do pay for our own travel, but I still believe the vast majority get it through work. Also, FTers probably only represent about 3-5% of all elites (and that's a high guess), so even if everyone on FT paid their own way, there would still be lots of other people to consider.