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Welcome to Coffee Break, where we focus on a single topic related to miles and points.

And each coffee break is limited to 20 minutes or less for your money back.

Today's coffee break, which cards will be couponized next?

There's been a plague of couponized cards.

So what we're talking about is credit cards where what happens as the issuer increases annual fees and to make up for it, what they do is they add these credits for kind of random things that often have nothing to do with the main purpose of the card to try to convince you that getting, you know, $8 a month in ride share credits makes up for an increased annual fee

as one example.

And so what we're going to do, I'm going to go through a brief history of the

couponization of credit cards in America today.

And then Nick and I are going to predict what's going to be couponized next.

So going back to July 2021, this is when I believe it all started, the Platinum card, the

American Express Platinum card, they increased their annual fee to $6.95.

I think it was around $5.50, something like that before that.

And they added all these random coupons.

They added a $20 per month digital entertainment credit, $15 per month of Uber credit,

except in December where it's more, $25 per month Equinox.

I mean, it just went on and on.

So that was kind of that and it became known as the coupon book.

And then not surprisingly, not very long later, the business platinum card was similarly refreshed with higher annual fee and some coupons.

And then since then, so about a year after the business platinum card in September of 2022, Marriott Bonvoy Brilliant card was refreshed.

But it was light on coupon.

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