Healthy Wage Game Definitions (Part 2: Individual Jackpots—aka the 6% Minis)

My favorite game other than the HealthyWager. Play in volume and make a lot of money.

Jackpot FAQ here

Jackpot rules here

What is it

The Individual Jackpot is a pool for players trying to lose 6% of their body weight in 12 weeks’ time.

How often are they offered?

In ordinary times, at least twice a week—typically starting on Wednesday’s and Sundays. In times when lots of people are enrolled in Healthy Wage (e.g. after the New Year holiday), there are more frequent Jackpots.

What does it cost?

All players pay a fee to enter the pool. The fee varies, but typical values are $30, $60, and $100. The fee can be paid in full upon enrollment in the jackpot or paid in three monthly installments.

What does it pay?

Varies. Three quarters of the collective fees are distributed equally amongst all players who drop 6% of their weight—0.5% of starting weight each week, and approximately 0.51% on a week-to-week basis.

The remaining 25% is kept by Healthy Wage for their expenses and profit. There is a guaranteed return of fees for winners if more than 75% of the pool makes weight, however—no risk of losing money due to too many people winning. Historical performance trends indicate that the triggering of the guarantee is a very rare event, however. Too many people falter during this medium-term performance period of 12 weeks.

Weigh-in procedure

You can weigh in on Day 1 of the Jackpot, or any day afterward as late as Day 15. Follow the typical verified weigh-in procedures (including the mobile app video weigh-in).

In fact, you can weigh in multiple times—if you gain weight during the first two weeks, you can do another verified weigh-in to reset your starting weight for the Jackpot. You’ll lose the first two weeks of time, but at least you won’t have to dig out of a hole that you dug during the first fortnight.

When you weigh in through the mobile app, you will get a chance to select the games that the weigh in will apply to. You need to select the Jackpot game in order for the weigh-in to apply to that game.

Weigh-out procedure

You can weigh out at the deadline or up to 2 weeks before.

Getting paid

The winners are paid no later than two weeks after the last day of the 12-week losing period for the Jackpot game. The winnings are paid in the form of HW Points, which can be cashed out or used in lieu of cash for enrolling in other games.

If the game started and ended on a Wednesday, the points will be awarded two Wednesdays later than the ending date. If the game started and ended on a Sunday, the points typically get awarded two Fridays after the ending Sunday.

Expected return

For me, jackpots with a $30 fee paid about $50 on average. The $18 profit is about a 66% return on investment.

With a $60 fee, I averaged $85. That’s a $25 profit and a 42% ROI. With a $100 fee, expect $131 on average; or a $31 profit and a 31% ROI.

How many of these can you do at one time?

Officially, Healthy Wage allows you to join 10 challenges at once. “Challenge” seems to refer to any game that is not a HealthyWager—you can do only one HealthyWager at a time.

In practice, you may be able to join any challenge that appears in the challenge menu, including individual jackpots. I have not heard of anyone being locked out of entering an individual jackpot game because they were in too many challenges already.

The only practical limitation comes from the fact that there are generally only 2 jackpots starting each week. So you could enter every jackpot available in a 12 week period and be in up to 24 jackpots at the end of the 12th week.

Let’s say you did that and there were 12 jackpots with $60 fees, 6 with $100 fees, and 6 with $30 fees. That would be a total of $1,500 invested over the 12 week period. If you made weight on every one—possible if you lost 12% of your weight in 6 months—you might end up with $1,020 from the $60 jackpots, $786 from the $100 jackpots, and $300 from the $30 jackpots. After 26 weeks, when the last jackpot pays off, you could have $2,106 in your account. That’s $606 profit on a $1,500 investment, or over 40% ROI.

Do ribbons and progress weigh-ins matter?

No, not to the payout.

People are supposed to enter progress weigh-ins, which drive the figures in the standings. But in my experience that standings are inaccurate when it comes to predicting what the final payout will be.

When the 12 weeks is over, and the weigh-out window is closed, you can predict with a couple of dollars what the final payout will be. Just find the lowest ranking player with 5.95% or greater weight loss (this is rounded up to 6.0% and counts as a win) and divide his or her rank by the displayed pot size.

Does the yo-yo rule matter?

Not on this challenge! If you gained since your HealthyWager ended, you can do one or more Jackpots to win money while re-losing that weight. You can then launch a second HealthyWager if you want to when you return to your old weigh-out weight.