$100 Dilemma for the Fall: Team Challenge or Individual Jackpots

Let’s say you have $100 in your pocket and want to invest it in Healthy Wage to get through the holidays without ballooning on turkey and fruitcake. Perhaps you have a HealthyWager due next year that you want to get safer on. But you want to pick up some extra dough.

Here are two options:

A) Two individual jackpots: Turning Over a New Leaf for $60, starting 10/16; and Welcome to the Great Pumpkin for $30, starting 10/20. Total $90 of bets.

B) $10,000 Team Challenge for $99, starting 10/18

Which do you choose?

Let’s look at the payouts:

Option A: Two Jackpots

If you lose 6% over roughly the same amount of time, you’ll get the $90 back in January, plus a profit of perhaps $22 on Great Pumpkin, and $25 on New Leaf. That’s $47 profit on a $90 investment, or $137 back from Healthy Wage. If you started with $100, the other $10 stays in your pocket, so you’ll have turned $100 into $142 by late January when these pay out.

If you can lose 6% of your weight, but not at least 10%, in 12 weeks, there is no dilemma: choose Option A.

Also if you don’t like doing team activities, no matter what your weight capabilities, I’d stick with Option A. (If you can lose faster, also consider Kickstarters at DietBet in which you lose 4% in 4 weeks—some of these can pay well.)

If you can lose more than 10% with high confidence—and you like working on teams and keeping up with online team-building activities and chores, read on to learn more about Option B.

Option B: Team Challenge

$1 stays in your pocket.

Here are the payout opportunities, in decreasing order of likelihood:

• $99 in 9 months (your money back) by losing 10% in that time (weigh-out period to claim this is 6/27/20 to 7/11/20)
• $35 to $100 in 14 weeks by losing 10% in 12 weeks—requires weekly weigh ins, profile photo, and full mini challenge participation because you need to maximize your individual ribbon count. (Can combine with the $99 in the summer)
• $600-$2,000 in 14 weeks by having a team post a top-3 team average. More likely than not, all team members will need to each lose 16.59% of their starting weight, AND get all 104 team aggregate ribbons by being perfect in weighing in weekly and doing all mini challenges. (If you win this, you can’t win the previous 2 things as well)

This is riskier then Option A, because more weight must be lost.

Also, if you do lose the 10%, you must also manage the ribbons properly—one mistake and you’re out of the individual ribbon prize (and likely will have jeopardized a team bid because the tiebreaker will be lost). Should you pull it off, however, you only get the profit immediately—the fee does not come back for 6 more months, and that assumes you maintain the weight loss.

The upside, of course, is the huge payout for being on a winning team.

That’s a chance you have to take by doing a Team Challenge. The team must be strong in order to have a fighting chance at the really big money.

My conclusion

If you’re thinking about joining a Team Challenge, I think you should really by trying for the big team money when you sign up, and plan around that.

The individual ribbon money is nice, and I thought long and hard today about whether a person without a team should sign up and try to get on one, with the intention of at least getting some ribbon money by losing 10%—since they control their own destiny for that, as opposed to their bid for top prize which can be derailed for a multitude of reasons at any time.

But in fact, the individual ribbon prize should be considered a fallback against such a derailment, rather than something to aspire to at the start.

Some members of teams that founder early might say, “Screw it, I might as well enjoy the holidays properly—pass me more stuffing and another beer, please.” The individual ribbon award gives people something to continue fighting for and keeps them in the challenge.

Yet, the $99 fee stays at Healthy Wage until the summer. It might stay there months after you win your HealthyWager. And the overall return on investment, independent of the timing concern, is not going to be much greater than it is for Option A.

Strong teams are important. I say at least try to get on a good team, where you know some of your teammates. If you know them in meat space, rather than just on the Internet, even better.

Speaking of meat space: any spouses that are signing for the Team Challenge as part of a 5 person team should consider simultaneous enrollment in the 6% October Team Challenge. This starts and ends on the same dates as the $10,000 TC. Enrollment costs $70 per person. A couple can enroll for $140 and be on a 2-person team. If a husband and wife can lose 10%—or 16.59%—together, why not win some extra dough for losing 6% along the way?