HWSim UK 🇬🇧 Coming Soon!

(1/13/20 See below for updates)

Note: for this post, assume a currency exchange rate of US$100 = £76.75, or £100 = US$130.30, which was prevalent on January 12, 2020, when I am writing this. When I write $ below I mean US dollars and £ for pound sterling unless I say otherwise.

There’s a UK site for Healthy Wage! If you live across the pond from me, you can use this site in lieu of the stateside version.

Some peculiarities exist with the UK version exist, based on my initial tour of the site.

The biggest one is that for HealthyWagers, the wagers and prizes are listed in British pounds rather than U.S. dollars. Drilling down into the details of this:

• Maximum prize amount is £10,000, which is equivalent to $13,030
• Minimum bet is £80, or $104.24–but actual minimum bet will be slightly higher due to rounding restrictions in the calculator. For a 6 month bet, your minimum is £14/month or £84.
• Weight is entered by default in kg. You can enter it in lbs if you want, but your prize will show the weight in kg, and any adjustments will have to be in kg. The calculator appears to correctly translate kg to lb, however, when it comes to calculating prizes; and the formulas governing payouts in the US calculator appear to hold here.
• Height is entered by default in cm. You can enter it in feet and inches if you want. Once you are on the prize pages, you cannot change it again by yourself as usual. The calculator payouts appear to be indifferent to the units you use here.
• The hidden net gain maximums for both genders that I discuss in other posts that are expressed in $ on the US site are the same numerical values on the UK site. Because pounds are worth more than dollars, the benefit for UK high rollers is that they can put up more money in absolute terms on the UK site than anyone using the US site.
  • For example, a 270 pound man pledging to lose 48 pounds in 6 months on the US site can achieve a maximum net gain of $768, which is $16 for each of those pounds (or $7.26 per kg). On the UK site, he is allowed to max out at £768, or £16 per pound ($20.85 per pound, £7.26 per kg, $9.46 per kg).
  • Women get bigger money than men, as usual—but again, the numerical values in the UK site match those in the US site, and the increased value of the pounds versus the dollars favors the high rollers.
• Referral links are £40 for both the referrer and the new player in ordinary times. That’s $52.12 in US money. (Conversely, if a UK player signs up through the US site and uses a $40 referral code, he or she gets a £30.62 bonus upon winning.
• All other challenges have fees expressed in US dollars. The jackpots cost $30, $60, or $100 to enter. The team challenge is $99 to enter.

What’s interesting and unknown to me is exactly how much money a UK player gets upon winning the HealthyWager. Technically, the prize is credited to the winner as “HW Points,” where HW1 = $1.

A UK player would presumably get paid in HW Points in some sort of exchange rate: a £1,000 prize might appear as a credit of HW1,303, if the exchange rate quoted above is used. The question I have is: what exchange rate is used to render this crediting?

Three possibilities exist:

1. The exchange rate at the time of sale is used. I think this is not likely, because it requires tracking of thousands of different exchange rates, one for each player, and communicating that information via customer service channels is a nightmare to manage
2. The exchange rate at the time of verification is used. Perhaps this is easier to manage and more palatable to players—they know it’s a US company and likely understand that they are basically working with US dollars
3. A recent exchange rate governs all wins in a certain year or period (e.g. they translate £1,000 to HW1,303 for all 2020 wins, no matter what the exchange rate changes to throughout the year)

The service agreement doesn’t seem to address this, so maybe a call to customer service is in order.

But for now, if you are a UK player, you can use either the US site or the UK site to access Healthy Wage. Which one to use might not matter, but based on what I can see here are the subtle differences that may point to one or the other being better for you:

• If you really want to max out your profit, use the UK site and bet in £, as they are worth more than $ and the numerical maximums are the same for both.
• Otherwise, if you have a preference for $ or £, use the appropriate site (note that challenges other than the HealthyWager are still in $ on the UK site).
• Otherwise, if you want to work in lbs, feet, and inches, use the US site; if you want to work in kg and cm, use the UK site.
• If the exchange rate is a strong enough concern, call customer service and ask what you need to of them. In the end it probably won’t be as important as actually performing the wager—after all, £0 = $0 now and forever.

Finally, if too much poutine and Laura Secord is what’s driving you to Healthy Wage, there is no country-specific website for you to use at this time. I strongly suspect you are okay with this, considering the state of your dollars relative to mine (January 12, 2020: US$100 = CAN$130.67, CAN$100 = US$76.53). If you like metric, however, you have to translate to freedom imperial units—honestly, as an American I would have preferred the USA to have metricized in the Seventies; overall it’s a better measurement system in my opinion.

1/13/20: I wrote Amanda Stewart, the marketing manager at Healthy Wage, today about this subject. Specifically I pointed out that from a technical viewpoint all prizes are paid in HW Points, which are pegged to the US dollar at a HW1=$1 ratio, and I suggested that if Healthy Wage wants to quote HealthyWager prizes in any currency other then US dollars they should select an exchange rate between each of those currencies and HW Points and publish it clearly.

Amanda wrote back and told me that a detailed FAQ publication is forthcoming.

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Hat tip to Charlotte for vital info. Her referral link is here, if you are in the UK and want to try this out!