Average Income for the Amex Platinum Cardmember: Numbers Are Surprisingly High!

When applying for an Amex card, the most commonly asked question is, “how rich do you have to be to get an American Express card?”

American Express isn’t specifically designed for rich folks, but it has a high level of status in many people’s minds. However, we couldn’t avoid this thinking, especially since its annual fee increased from $550 for four years to $695.
 

While price shock is understandable, there is more to Amex credit card than its annual fee. Earlier this March, Monkey Miles discovered some intriguing statistics about The Platinum Card® from American Express members' average income.

Let’s talk more about this below.

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The Departures Magazine 

Departures was an American luxury lifestyle magazine curated for American Express Platinum Card® and Centurion® Members. A year ago, it ended its publishing deal with Meredith Corp. and went from physical to a fully digital platform–made available exclusively to those same members online via a paywalled website.
 

Interestingly, Departures also provided a media kit online (which is now taken down) that shared its subscribers' demographic and income data to promote advertising on what the average reader of the magazine looks like to marketers.

American Express Cardmembers Demographics: Then and Now

According to View From The Wing’s report, the data 18 months ago revealed that 5,000 to 7,500 new card members were added each month on average, with the vast majority residing in the most populated states of New York, California, Texas, and Florida— and just 745 in North Dakota.

The greatest card market was New York City with 261,484, which dwarfed the second-largest market, Los Angeles, with 115,864, and the third-largest market, Miami, with around 53,710. 

Houston was ranked seventh, while Dallas Fort-Worth was ranked eleventh. The average household income for both Platinum and Centurion cardmembers at the time was reported to be $741,170.

Fast forward to the present times, the following data from OneMileAtATime shows the “average” demographic and income data of Departures reader (aka Amex Cardmember).