Your post could be Exhibit A at the Trial Of Bloggers.

Sorry, you have been suckered.

You have obviously been following the popular blogs. You have been fooled into thinking that if you sign up for a couple of credits cards, and then spend your money carefully, you will soon be jetting off to the Maldives and Bora Bora in First Class every few months, your family drowning in champagne and caviar, living it up.

Well, there's bad news.

The fact is that the only people who are going to profit from your activities are the bloggers who suckered you into clicking their sign-up links. You do realize that they make several hundred bucks from your sign-ups, right? That's why they painted the picture for you of flying your family off to exotic places that you otherwise would never be able to afford.

Unfortunately, there is no way that you are going to meet your goals by simply spending your money, no matter how carefully you try to manage your various spend categories and how you pick your cards.

The cost (in points) of your "aspirational international vacation travel" (boy, you really have bought the bloggers' dream, hook, line and sinker - you're even parroting their signature catch phrase) is far, far beyond what you are ever going to be able to generate based on your description. You think you're going to be able to get enough points to take "aspirational international vacations" a couple times a year for you and your family, just with your regular spend and an occasional gift card thrown in? You might want to go back and run your numbers for that scenario.

ibleed0range is spot-on. You ain't going ANYWHERE just by managing your normal spending - unless you constantly spend an incredible amount of money, there's no way you're going to generate enough points for the kind of travel you are dreaming of. You are gonna need to constantly churn credit card accounts, and on top of that also move real money through whatever mechanisms are available to you. Meanwhile, as you slowly accumulate miles and points, the programs will devalue over and over again, as they tend to do more often nowadays. You're gonna be chasing your "aspirational international vacation travel" for a while.

Rather than obsessing over whether you should put dinner at the Olive Garden on your Capital One card or your Ink card, you might want to just try booking a sample "aspirational international vacation" and see how many points that's going to require (at today's rates - never mind that next year it will require lots more). Then take a look at how quickly you are accumulating those points. Run the numbers and see how your plan looks.

Switching which card you put various kinds of spend on is not going to make any appreciable difference.