welcome back I'm Alex Kramer it's now time to take a look at your latest business headlines we're going to welcome president of Stark LLC Hillary Ford which Hillary good morning so Costco increasing their membership fees for the first time in seven years so the annual fee for a standard membership has risen from $60 to 65 while the executive membership fee has gone up from 120 to 130 this fee hike is attributed to the need to cover Rising operational costs and to invest in improving store services so obviously Hillary you know Costco is a very popular shopping destination for many Americans looking to kind of get those Bargains you know you get the you get more stuff or Le less money how many I mean will this end up hurting most Americans just you think it's only five dollar but that really is a lot in this economy well yes a couple of things you said many Americans you're absolutely correct there the many Americans is 53 M million many Americans so about 53 million Americans have those memberships uh it's $5 on a regular gold membership and $10 on an executive membership uh what though Costco has seen is they actually I believe watched Amazon raise their prime numbers and saw that it really didn't hurt them uh there is not a lot of churn in those memberships uh of those memberships don't forget all that money it's going to be approximately 400 million Alex go straight to the bottom line those margins really help their bottom line why there's no cost involv it's just straight profit so it really is good for their stock their stock is way up I think over 34% are due to this so I think for the average American yes I mean $5 though I will say if you look over a year that there's a lot of savings when people go to Costco so I don't think you're going to see I don't think people are going to say I don't want all those savings every month and I'm not going to spend the $5 good for Costco but yet again another cost increase yeah and they're kind of following Netflix steps they're really cracking down on sharing those memberships I know now you have to scan it outside the building before you can even come in thank you so much for joining us this morning always a pleasure having you on you Alex thank you pleasure