No credit card required
Browse credit cards from a variety of issuers to see if there's a better card for you.
What is so great about Amex Backdating, I cant figure it out, it seems like the only thing that it does is change the date of the card to the first time you had an amex card... Is there more to it than this?
@iMacDrew wrote:What is so great about Amex Backdating, I cant figure it out, it seems like the only thing that it does is change the date of the card to the first time you had an amex card... Is there more to it than this?
Well if you knew how your FICO score is calculated then maybe you would see a significance. Average Age of Accounts is part of your FICO score and opening a new card will hurt your AAoA and potentially hurt your score (almost 100% of the time) so AMEX, being the great company they are has what is called backdating to allow fo you to apply for a new card and not worry about it hurting your AAoA and in a lot of cases helping it. It's just another reason AMEX is great and everybody wants a relationship with them.
ok well right, I understand that, but why do people wait till the beginning of the year to apply for Amex cards...
I just added a third Amex card (the BCE) in May and it was automatically backdated to 1989. My AAoA was already 16 years and it didn't change (was hoping it would increase!). But the card appears on all of my credit reports with an open date of May 1989.
I've read of some people getting a good score boost from adding a backdated Amex. I guess it depends on whether you have a thin file, shorter AAoA, etc. My file is thick and AAoA already pretty good, so I guess that's why I didn't see a gain in my AAofA.
@iMacDrew wrote:ok well right, I understand that, but why do people wait till the beginning of the year to apply for Amex cards...
Because January is when you can get the most bang for your backdating. Let's say you opened a Zync this month and so it reports as opened 7/2012 on your credit reports. And then in January 2013 you opened a BCP. The BCP would end up showing on your credit reports as being opened 1/2012, thus being 6 months older than your first Amex card (Zync in this scenario). That's how the backdating works.
@CribDuchess wrote:
@iMacDrew wrote:ok well right, I understand that, but why do people wait till the beginning of the year to apply for Amex cards...
Because January is when you can get the most bang for your backdating. Let's say you opened a Zync this month and so it reports as opened 7/2012 on your credit reports. And then in January 2013 you opened a BCP. The BCP would end up showing on your credit reports as being opened 1/2012, thus being 6 months older than your first Amex card (Zync in this scenario). That's how the backdating works.
Doesn't quite work out like this mathematically I think. For the individual tradeline, it will always be exactly X years older than today's date regardless of when you open it. Stupid example:
Original account opened 2012.
New Account in 1/2013 = 1/12 backdate, one year history on the new tradeline
or New Account in 2/2013 = 2/12 backdate, one year history on the new tradeline
or New Account in 3/2013 = 3/12 backdate, one year history on the new tradeline
I was thinking about that the other day (and admittedly I've mentioned the whole January thing too), but the two most important things are:
- Cross a year boundary
- Open up any tradeline you want as soon as possible.
So if we're talking March or whatever, just open it (payment history counts afterall which backdating doesn't help with to my knowledge), but if we're talking November, then it's prudent to wait till January and take the additional year on backdating. Not sure where it exactly breaks down in terms of better to wait or not, judgement call since everyone's situation is by definition different I guess.
From that analysis though, January should likely receive the statistical majority of the applications compared to other individual months, but it's not mandated to do so and might be deterimental if you're missing out on a bunch of payment entries by not opening it up ealrier.
<--- will break out of the garden in January for my next round of Amex products for my 2006 backdate
@CribDuchess wrote:
@iMacDrew wrote:ok well right, I understand that, but why do people wait till the beginning of the year to apply for Amex cards...
Because January is when you can get the most bang for your backdating. Let's say you opened a Zync this month and so it reports as opened 7/2012 on your credit reports. And then in January 2013 you opened a BCP. The BCP would end up showing on your credit reports as being opened 1/2012, thus being 6 months older than your first Amex card (Zync in this scenario). That's how the backdating works.
Ahhhh I see !!! so its like an exploited glitch in the system? >
@Revelate wrote:
@CribDuchess wrote:
@iMacDrew wrote:ok well right, I understand that, but why do people wait till the beginning of the year to apply for Amex cards...
Because January is when you can get the most bang for your backdating. Let's say you opened a Zync this month and so it reports as opened 7/2012 on your credit reports. And then in January 2013 you opened a BCP. The BCP would end up showing on your credit reports as being opened 1/2012, thus being 6 months older than your first Amex card (Zync in this scenario). That's how the backdating works.
Doesn't quite work out like this mathematically I think. For the individual tradeline, it will always be exactly X years older than today's date regardless of when you open it. Stupid example:
Original account opened 2012.
New Account in 1/2013 = 1/12 backdate, one year history on the new tradeline
or New Account in 2/2013 = 2/12 backdate, one year history on the new tradeline
or New Account in 3/2013 = 3/12 backdate, one year history on the new tradeline
I was thinking about that the other day (and admittedly I've mentioned the whole January thing too), but the two most important things are:
- Cross a year boundary
- Open up any tradeline you want as soon as possible.
So if we're talking March or whatever, just open it (payment history counts afterall which backdating doesn't help with to my knowledge), but if we're talking November, then it's prudent to wait till January and take the additional year on backdating. Not sure where it exactly breaks down in terms of better to wait or not, judgement call since everyone's situation is by definition different I guess.
From that analysis though, January should likely receive the statistical majority of the applications compared to other individual months, but it's not mandated to do so and might be deterimental if you're missing out on a bunch of payment entries by not opening it up ealrier.
All very good points. I definitely agree about the payment history helping so much more than backdating ever could. Backdating is a unique feature of Amex, but I don't think backdating helps when your reports are being reviewed manually by underwriting. I opened a BCE in May 2012 and it's reporting as opened in May 1989. Pretty sure an underwriter can figure that one out when they see the payment/balance history begins in June 2012.
Backdating can sometimes help with AAofA.