If you’ve started doing any amount of research into credit card travel rewards, there is no doubt you’ve seen people talk about Chase’s 5/24 Rule. The basic explanation of the rule is that whenever you apply for a new Chase credit card, Chase will look to see how many cards you’ve opened within the last 24 months from any bank. If you have opened 5 or more personal credit cards in the previous 24 months, Chase will deny your application.

Since Chase is currently the only bank that has this rule, we always recommend starting with Chase cards if you are going to be opening a good amount of cards in the near future. After you open your first five cards, then you should move on to cards from other banks (American Express, CitiCards, Barclays, Wells Fargo, etc.) since they don’t look at how many you’ve opened in the previous 24 months.

You will notice in the bold definition of the 5/24 rule above, that I specified “personal credit cards.” This is because most business credit cards won’t count against your 5/24 score with the exception of Discover, TD Bank, and Capital One. I also said that it counts that are opened and not just applied for. If you apply for a card and are denied it for one reason or another, this also does not count against your 5/24 score.

One important note that many people overlook is that adding someone as an authorized user onto a credit card does count against their 5/24 score. For example, if I am approved for a card and then decide to add my wife as an authorized user so that she can have a card, that counts as 1 card for each of us.

Hopefully this will help answer some questions you have about the 5/24 rule. Just remember that you will not ever find anything from Chase about this rule and there have been isolated cases on both sides where people have been approved or denied when the rule says the opposite should have happened.

Have questions about the 5/24 rule? Leave them in the comments below and I’ll follow up.