Thank you, Beckles! Had not heard of the new Forward card. This will replace the Costco AMEX for restaurant purchases. Based on what's been reported elsewhere on FlyerTalk, that's probably better for the struggling restaurant merchants anyway. We've been trying to get into the habit of paying cash at restaurants for the psychological conditioning to spend less but sometimes we forget to grab the cash in advance.

So now our optimized plan is:

PenFed Platinum Rewards -- 5% on gas

Citi Forward -- 5% on restaurants, movies, book/record stores

Chase Freedom Plus -- 3.75% on grocery stores, gym membership, pet stores/vet, telecom (cell phones), Internet access, and drug stores

Discover Card -- for each quarter's 5% promotion

Everything else is split between an always-2% Orchard Bank card and a Southwest rewards card. (WN credits are the only ones I value close to 2%.)

For foreign travel, I start with a Capital One card with no transaction fee (yields 1% cash back) until it's full, then put the excess on the PenFed card (1.25% cash back minus 1% transaction fee = 0.25% cash back).

There are lots of great threads in various places on FT that helped us figure that out. Another ^ benefit of this community. These CC rewards can be a great value, considering we don't carry a balance month-to-month, especially for paying the regular living expenses and bills.