So in the last month, American Express has been making some major changes on their most popular credit cards and this includes the Gold Card, the Business Gold, and the Platinum. Even in just the past few days, we actually got word on some co-branded cards amongst the Hilton lineup of those getting some adjustments too. Now, if you're in the market for any one of those cards that I mentioned, or if you just happen to be holding one of them, this is still going to be one of the most important credit card update that you need to pay attention to. on the off chance you don't hear about these benefits and you go and apply for some of these cards in the wrong order.

there is a possible chance that you will now lose out on more than $900 in cash value. So according to new updates regarding the terms and conditions, it turns out that now you will not be able to get a welcome bonus offer on the American Express gold card if you've already had the Platinum Card, the Platinum Card by Charles Schwab and the platinum card from Morgan Stanley. Basically, American Express has pretty much implemented this new rule where they are now structuring the order in the process of you applying for their card. Now, this isn't the first time we've seen issuers do this.

Obviously, the credit card Market is pretty competitive with American Express fighting against Chase Capital One and some of the other companies to date. What's most interesting though is that American Express is usually held to the standard that they are one of the top credit card issuers alongside Chase. The fact that it now seems like American Express is pulling back some of the benefits that Us card holders gets Really makes me wonder the financial situation that they are going through now because AMX alongside a lot of the major banks, are publicly traded companies. They actually published their Finance report and it turns out they are still doing pretty fine even amidst this economy where interest rates are still skyrocketing.

American Express is still reporting positive numbers. Even according to their Quarter 3 2023 earnings release. you'll actually see that they are reporting some record Revenue numbers up 133% from the year earlier to now $15.4 billion in Revenue. Even for their third quarter earnings per share, they went up and Rose 34% to re record at $3.30 Now this video here isn't about going through American Express's Financial reports I Want to just focus on the key deliverables of this video which is getting you the news on those major credit card changes when it comes to American Express We'll just end it with this line here.

There were strong results driven by continued growth in card member spending and best-in-class credit performance. The Chairman and CEO Steven Squir stated we reported another quarter of record revenues and earnings per share, which increased 133% and 34% respectively from a year earlier, reflecting the continued momentum we have built in our business over the last few years. Anyways, I'm going outside the scope of this video. Let's get back into the rules.

So going back to the rules now, you must get the gold card first and then American Express wants you to get the Platinum Card Second, If you did it the other way around by getting the Platinum Card first, then you wouldn't get the gold card's welcome bonus offer which would cost you over $900 in cash value based on the welcome bonus offer that I've seen floating round of even 990,000 points. Now here is another alternative for the people that have already gotten the Platinum Card. What you can now do is look towards the American Express Green Card which is currently not impacted by this rule. at the time of filming this video, the green card has a welcome bonus offer of giving you 40,000 points after you spend $3,000 in the first 6 months.

Now, it's not just these new rules that American Express has implemented, but the minimum spend requirement which is also a big deal for many people. As it should be because without hitting the minimum spend requirement or overspending, it'll either lead you to debt or missing out on a lot of points. So the American Express gold card was at $4,000 on spend, but now you must spend $6,000 in order to get the bonus. At this time though, the business gold card is not restricted with any of these rules.

but several weeks ago, American Express has already made some big drastic changes where they even increased the annual fee from $295 to $375 which would then get implemented on February 1st of 2024. Now regarding the American Express Business Gold Card, even though the annual fee has gone up, I would justify it with all these several benefits that they've also added. I covered this in deep detail a few weeks ago. I'm going just go over like a 30 second rerun here.

So the MX Business Gold Card: You can earn 4X points on two spending categories that you have to manually choose within the website, so taking a look at your screen, you'll see all the new benefits that they added and some of the old ones that they took away which do not qualify for the forx return back on spend anymore. On top of that, the Business Gold Card also got $240 in flexible business statement credits. these are applicable at FedEx GrubHub and office supply stores. Now this credit here is given out in $20 increments every single month for 12 months.

If you maximize that, you do get a huge reduction in that annual fee and this is just something I Personally wouldn't complain about because at the end of the day, it is free money if you are able to take advantage of it and figuring out that these are three pretty popular places you could get your return on. I would still value these credits to be something. Now that's not all though, because usually when it comes to the American Express Platinum Card we've seen that come with welcome bonuses all over the map. You know 60,000 880,000, 150,000 after you spend $6,000 within the first 6 months.

but it looks like American Express has now upped the minimum spend requirement on this car too, where you now have to spend about $8,000 in 6 months in order to qualify. American Express has also added language that could crack down on earning multiple welcome bonuses on different co-branded versions of the card. Now, if you're a credit card Pro you'll already know about this, but the Platinum card has many different variations, so they have that Charles Schwab version the Morgan Stanley version. as we mentioned earlier in this video, and if you happen to get one of those cards, you may not qualify for the other Platinum cards welcome bonus offer.

So those are the major changes that we've seen happen with American Express We've covered all the lounge A's stuff. In an earlier video, we talked about the new American Express no annual fee authorized User card I actually reviewed that card which I consider to be like the MX white card. so watch those videos if you haven't done so already. But moving forward, the American Express Hilton surpass and the Expire card are also getting an increase in their annual fee.

So the Hilton surpass card used to have an annual fee of $95 it is going up to $150 and the annual fee on the Hilton Aspire card is going up from $450 to 550 bucks. Now the annual fee increase has already taken place on these two cards, but there is one thing which I'd say is a little bit of a good news and that is the fact the welcome bonus offer on both of these cards are still elevated for a limited time. These are going to expire on January 17th, 2024 so you still have a few months from the time of me filming this video. and right now with the Hilton surpass card, you can get 170,000 Hilton points after spending $3,000 in 3 months.

and then you can also get 180,000 points after spending $6,000 in the first 6 months Now it was about four months ago I made a video going over the three essential Advanced Credit Card strategies that people don't really talk about, but they are critical in you being able to get a lot of points where I' value it to be even at over $10,000 back. One of those strategies includes the whole Hilton honor setup where you upgrade, you downgrade, you get it over again and it looks like right now with these adjustments that we've seen them add to the rule, things are going to change a little bit, but still, my own takeaway is that you can still get positive value. By the way, I Thought that video was going to be a banger. There was so much value in there and so if you are a bit more on the advaned side, you've been in the credit card market for many years.

Highly recommend watching that video too because I share a lot of value going over some of the more in-depth strategies for our late game people. All right. so those are all the biggest changes that you need to know about regarding American Express And here are my biggest takeaways for this conclusion. So first of all, you always want to make sure that you diversify your cards between major issuers.

If you have all your eggs in one basket your team AMX and they continue to raise that annual fee. You then begin to see that if you spend the same amount of money and they raise it annual fee, the profit or the ROI that you get back starts to lower down. This is why for me, amongst my 20 something some credit cards I have it amongst all the major issuers I Love having my own blend of different Chase cards, no annual fee cards, business credit cards and more. Currently I think Capital One is doing a great job with branding and two of the best products that I think are good alternatives to some American Express products are going to be the Capital 1 Venture X card and the Capital One Sa One card that I've talked about in depth many times on this channel.

Now if you are a bit newer to the whole credit card game, I would just say this: go for the American Express gold card, then go for the plat card and make sure that you are able to hit those minimum spend requirement fees. Now there's a ton of ways for you to hit those minimum spend requirements, especially if you're more on The Frugal side of spending your dollars. but with tax season coming up and a lot of these different new apps that I'm seeing I'd still be surprised if you apply for any one of these cards and you can't meet that minimum spend requirement, especially in that 6mon period. Now if you guys are looking to apply for any of these cards that I mentioned in this video, one quick easy way for you to support this channel as well is to check out the links Down Below in the description.

Any time you use those links, you guys directly support us. and I appreciate every single person using those links. Now by the way, if you haven't yet follow me on Instagram and Twitter be sure to do that as well. And I'm also going to be speaking at the travel Summit in Canada that's going to be way in April but I'd love for you guys to come check it out and join the link for that will also be down below in the description.