Best Credit Cards for Excellent Credit

The basic idea behind taking advantage of an excellent credit score is that you leverage your score to improve your financial situation. How you do this will depend on what your current money goals are, but I’ve outlined your main options below.

Max out what you earn on your spending

If you don’t have any high-interest debt to pay off, then you’re free to focus on maximizing what you earn from your credit card. You can choose whether to do this with:

Carrying multiple cards

Contrary to the popular misconception, having multiple credit cards isn’t bad for your credit score. And with an excellent score, you have a good chance of getting approved for multiple cards.

How does having multiple credit cards help you earn more back? The first way, and the most significant, is the signup bonuses. It’s simple math - - getting four 50,000-point signup bonuses beats getting one. Those bonuses are how even someone relatively frugal can collect enough points to pay for all their travel.

The second is mixing and matching cards based on which cards earn the most back in each spending category. Since there are so many cards with different rewards rates, combining cards like this can help you earn much more on your everyday expenses. Here’s an example of how this could work with cash-back cards:

That example uses cash-back cards, but you could do the same with travel rewards cards.

You should exercise caution here, as more credit cards means more to manage, and one late fee can wipe away a lot of hard work. But if you’re willing, multiple cards can pay off.

Refinance your debt

If you have debt, your credit score can help you refinance it, so you pay less in interest and only need to make one payment towards it per month. The two most common financial tools for this are balance transfer credit cards and personal loans.

With a balance transfer credit card, you can move all your credit card debt to one card. Although you’ll typically pay balance transfer fees for this, the best balance transfer cards offer low intro APR rates, sometimes even at 0%, so you’ll have time to pay off what you owe without accumulating any more interest.

A personal loan allows you to pay off any existing debt, and then pay the loan off in equal installments. There aren’t any 0% APR offers, but the best personal loans do offer low interest rates. And unlike credit cards, personal loans don’t require you to transfer balances or pay balance transfer fees.

Finance a purchase

I usually don’t recommend financing large purchases, as I’ve found it’s better to save enough money to pay for what I want outright and avoid the debt entirely. But if you really want or need something that’s out of your budget, you can apply for a 0% APR credit card and put the purchase on that.

The 0% APR will only be the intro rate (no bank would have much success offering 0% APR indefinitely). This means it’s imperative that you’re able to pay off your purchase in full before that intro period ends.

he best credit card for excellent credit varies by person, since you need to pick the one that matches your needs. For one person, a card with fantastic travel rewards may be the top choice, but that same card wouldn’t be as useful if you needed to transfer balances.

Here are some of the best credit cards you’ll find for each of the goals mentioned above:

Travel rewards:

• Capital One® Venture® Rewards Credit Card -- A high flat rate and easy-to-use rewards.

• Chase Sapphire Preferred® -- Solid travel rewards and a reasonable annual fee.

Cash back:

Balance transfers and 0% intro APR offers:

• Length of credit history -- 15% of your score

• Recent credit inquiries -- 10% of your score

• Types of credit used -- 10% of your score

One of the biggest perks of an excellent credit score is that when you apply for a new card, the odds are in your favor. But no credit score guarantees you a successful application. To help you avoid situations where you receive a denial despite a high credit score, it helps to understand the most common reasons that would happen:

• Insufficient income -- Card issuers will only extend you so much credit based on your income. If the minimum credit limit on a card is more than what the card issuer is willing to issue to you, then they won’t approve your application.

• Too much credit extended already -- When you have one or more credit cards with a card issuer, there could come a point where they’re unwilling to issue you any more credit. One method to get around this that has worked for me is asking a customer service representative to reduce the credit lines on my other cards, and then put that available credit towards the new card.

• Too many recent credit inquiries -- Card issuers get wary when they see several recent credit inquiries on your file, because there’s the risk of you either racking up huge balances you don’t pay or getting a card’s sign-up bonus, and then canceling the card. What constitutes too many inquiries varies by card issuer, and some are believed to have their own internal rules about this.

• Too many cards opened recently -- Closely related to the reason above, this is another area where card issuers seem to have their own internal rules that come into play. A confirmed restriction is Chase’s 5/24 rule, which automatically denies your Chase credit card application if you’ve opened five or more credit accounts in the previous 24 months.

As you can see, most of these issues relate to applying for new credit cards frequently, and you’re unlikely to run into any of them if it’s your first application in some time. The only exception is insufficient income, but you can get most credit cards with an annual salary in the $30,000 to $40,000 range, and potentially even less.

What to do if your application is denied

For one reason or another, you’ve probably seen the dreaded “We’re unable to approve you for a credit card at this time.” It’s even more frustrating to read this when you know you’re an ideal client, but it’s not the end of the road.

Whenever you have a denied application, you should contact the card issuer’s reconsideration line and ask them to take another look at it. Be sure to mention everything that demonstrates your financial responsibility -- never missing a payment, paying your bill in full, and so on.

With any luck, the representative will push your application through. If not, you can always call back and try again. The worst that can happen is they’ll say no, so this is a no-lose scenario.