A lot of people ask regarding Chase’s 5/24 rule how to calculate the exact date of when you become re-eligible. For example, if you got approved for a credit card on December 20, 2016, does that card roll off your 5/24 record in 2018 on December 1, December 20, December 21, January 1 or some other date?
Upon inspecting my credit report it became clear that Experian considers any new account as if it had been opened the first day of the month. Equifax and Transunion, on the other hand, compute the exact date of approval (give-or-take a day). It’s consistent across all credit card issuers, and there’s a Reddit data point backing this idea as actually working on the ground. (and another)
If you know Chase will be pulling your Experian only, you should probably be able to apply today for a Chase card if you had a card opened on any date in December 2016. That card fell off on December 1, 2018 – if that brings you down to just 4 new accounts, you should be eligible for approval. If Chase pulls a different credit bureau or if you fear they may, calculate the account from the exact approval date (plus a day or two), and then you should probably be eligible for approval from Chase.
Hard to say anything for certain since it’s possible the reps always just add a month. Conversely, it’s possible reps always just subtract to the beginning of the month. But simply put it should depend on Experian vs. Equifax/Transunion. It’s also possible there is a difference between how the automated system calculates and how the reps calculate.
- Read:Â Which Credit Bureau Does Chase Pull?
- Read:Â Which Credit Card Issuers Will Approve an Application with a Frozen Credit Report?
You can always check your own credit reports to confirm the exact date of any given account, but a lot of people don’t like dealing with that and use their own spreadsheets to calculate eligibility, so this is useful to know.
I’d still recommend as a best practice to give a month extra leeway if you can, but sometimes there are time-limited offers, and it’s useful to know that with Experian you should assume the card got reported back at the beginning of the month you were approved, whereas with Equifax and Transunion they use the exact approval date (give-or-take a day).
Another note readers mention in the comments: In certain formats, Experian DOES notate the exact date. We don’t know which format Chase gets so it’s hard to rely on this backdating. If anyone has additional data points, drop them in the comments below.
