No it’s not some complicated math formula. And it’s got nothing to do with May.
The 5/24 Rule can be broken down into two parts. Quite simply, 5 refers to the amount of cards opened by a person and 24 refers to the amount of months in a given time period. Now let’s get into it.
Chase has an unwritten rule for new credit card applications that says if you have opened 5 credit cards in a span of 24 months, they will not approve you for a new one. You need to wait until one falls out of the 24 month range before applying for a new card.
Here are 5 things you should know about the 5/24 rule:
5 includes any and all credit cards that were reported to your credit report, including other banks.
Business cards do not get reported to your personal credit report, therefore they do not count towards your 5. However, Chase does still require you to be under 5/24 when applying for a Business Card.
Since this is strictly a Chase rule, you should focus on opening Chase cards before moving onto other point currencies. If you get good at travel hacking, you will definitely open more than 5 cards over the span of 24 months.
Being an autheorized user does not add to your 5. However, it does get reported to your credit report, so you need to call Chase and specify which account is not primarily yours, so they can manually override it.
You can track your cards by requesting a copy from any of the 3 major credit reporting agencies (TransUnion, Equifax and Experian) here. You can also track new accounts opened with any credit score tracker such as CreditWise.
I hope this was helpful. Leave your questions below and I will answer them!
Happy travels,
Chavy