Andy Hough

Healthy Wage Paid Me – Healthy Wage Review

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hwcheckI am happy to report that I received my check from Healthy Wage this week.  Now that I have received payment I want to share my thoughts on the entire Healthy Wage process.

This post contains affiliate links to Healthy Wage and I may be paid a commission if you sign up. I have personally used Healthy Wage and would not recommend them if I didn’t think it’s a great service.

Things didn’t start off too great with Healthy Wage. On their website you have to enter your information like you are making a bet in order to see what the bet would pay. I placed several different fake wagers in order to see what the different payouts would be. It appears that the maximum you can win is $600. After a certain point larger bets just mean that you will get your own money back plus the $600.  Even though I could have won the same $600 with a smaller bet I’m glad I bet $3000 since the fear of losing that money was a major motivation to lose the weight.

Bet on yourself and start your HealthyWager today.

The problem I had with making my healthy wager was that I intended to bet $3000 that I would lose 25 pounds in six months. I thought that was the bet I placed and even wrote a post stating that was what I had bet. It wasn’t until a couple of days later that I noticed in my Healthy Wage account that they had my wagers as being to lose 30 pounds in six months.  Apparently, one of my test wagers ended up being my actual wager rather than the wager I had actually intended. The wager process needs to be clearer and it would be nice if they would send you an email confirmation stating the terms of your bet.

During the six months I just had to weigh in once a week or so to show my progress. These weigh ins didn’t have to be verified so they were easy to do.  There isn’t really much interaction with Healthy Wage between the initial weigh-in and the final weigh-in so everything was fine there.

You have a two-week period at the end of the bet to do your final weigh-in.  I was still losing weight to get to 30 pounds lost when the weigh-in period began. I managed to lose the last of the weight a few days into the weigh-in period and went to my local gym to get my weight verified.  After I had my weight verified my girlfriend and I went to Pizza Ranch to celebrate. That probably wasn’t a wise move, but I did enjoy indulging in some of the foods I had been denying myself.

The buffet celebration almost turned out to be a costly mistake. I did my verification weigh-in on Saturday and Monday I received a notice that Healthy Wage wanted me to do a second weigh-in.  I certainly understand that when there is this much money at stake that they want to be sure everything is legitimate.  The tone of the email seemed overly accusatory though and the statement that they often require a second weigh-in contradicted the information on their site that states that they rarely require a second weigh-in.

The first place they chose for me to weigh-in was over three hours away.  I’m not sure what they were thinking there.  After contacting them I was able to get a weigh-in scheduled at a gym in Kansas City. Luckily, I had only gained a couple of pounds from my weekend indulgences and was easily able to lose that weight again before the second weigh-in.

After they received my second verification weigh-in they did quickly send me an email stating that I had won and that I would receive my check in about a week.  My check did arrive in about a week. I was quite happy with the speed of settling the bet after my weight had been verified. Overall, I was pleased with the Healthy Wage process even though they do have some things that need improvement.  I would make another Healthy Wager since I still need to lose another 30 pounds, but once you have won one Healthy Wager you cannot make another one.

Want to get in on the “dieting for dollars” craze and up your potential for weight loss success? Bet on yourself and start your HealthyWager today. Then lose the weight and get paid, simple as that!

September Income – $1692.21

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Here is a breakdown of my income for September.

Online Income

 $646.75
Achievemint

$25
Interest

$5.20
Account Bonuses

$75

Cash Back

$35.80
Mystery Shop

$43

Amazon FBA

 $50
Dividends $19.87
Medical Study $700.00
Jobs $91.59

Total

$1692.21

My income was pretty good in September considering I had very little job income.  The job income was unexpected since it was a final paycheck from a job I had back in 2008. It took them a while to find me.

I didn’t do a very good job of tracking my Amazon FBA income in September. I’m guessing I made about $50, but that might be a bit high since most of the stuff I sold made only a small profit and some items were sold at a loss.

I received some bonus income from the Motif referral bonus and the Betterment referral bonus.  Unfortunately, the Betterment bonus has ended. If you want to sign up through one of my referral links they are in the sidebar. If you want more information on the Motif bonus feel free to email me or leave a comment. I’m going to try to make more money from  referral bonuses. I like them because they make me money and make money for my readers as well.

My cashback income stayed about the same. If you haven’t joined Mr. Rebates yet you can get a $5 bonus for signing up through my referral link and I’ll make a little money for referring you as well.
Mr. Rebates

September was the last month of the medical study so I won’t be getting any more checks from that. Those checks did help my bottom line quite a bit. I have worked the first couple weeks of October which should result in a reasonably good income for October.

 

 

September Expenses – $1743.67

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Here is a breakdown of my expenses for September.

Household $408.45
Entertainment $19.68
Transportation $90.19
Food $181.83
Student Loan $106.00
Travel $258.40
Phone $26.81
Health $652.31
Total $1743.67

 

My September expenses were high, but that is mainly because I had a dental procedure that was about a $600 expense. If you take that away my expenses were fairly close to my target of $1000.

My food expenses were way too high.  That was mainly due to having expensive meals during my hiking trip on the Katy Trail. I should have done better there, but when you’re walking there aren’t a lot of restaurant options. I did eat out way too much the first half of the month which made my weight loss harder than it needed to be.

Travel is the other expense that I don’t always have.  A big part of that was $114 I spent on a hotel during my hike.  That was more than I wanted to spend, but where I got off the trail there wasn’t any camping and only a couple of hotels were within reasonable walking distance.  It didn’t occur to me until later that I could have taken a taxi to a cheaper hotel and still come out ahead. Oh well, I will know better next time.  I also prepaid some of the expense for our trip to Cancun next month.  This vacation is not going to be as cheap as I originally thought.  It will still be a great deal though.

Entertainment expenses were my only low-cost category. This was because I had purchased a movie gift card the month before and we only went to the movies once.  My entertainment for the month was mainly watching lots of football.

This month I will have dental expenses and travel expenses again so it will not be a low-cost month.  I should at least be able to lower my food expense.  Although it will be a higher expense month I’m okay with it.  It isn’t worth letting my dental health suffer just to save money.

Weight Loss Goal Achieved!

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CAM00421 It wasn’t easy, but I have finally achieved my weight loss goal. As most of you probably already know I bet $3000 back in April that I could lose 30 pounds in six months. My weight loss started off fast and then plateaued for most of the summer. This last month I kicked the weight loss into high gear again since I was in serious danger of losing $3000. The last few pounds to lose were very stubborn. I was stuck with about five pounds to lose for two weeks. This week I watched my diet very carefully and exercised and was finally rewarded with meeting my weight loss goal. I would have preferred to have lost more than my goal, but just hitting the goal is still a big accomplishment. I’m celebrating meeting my goal by eating some foods I’ve been denying myself this weekend. After that I’m going to get back to losing weight. My new goal will be to get to 170 pounds which is considered a healthy weight for my height. I’m hoping I can hit that goal early next year. The all-inclusive vacation next month and all the holiday food might make that goal difficult, but I think I can do it.

I just sent the email to HealthyWage.com to claim my winnings. I don’t think they have anyone working the weekends, but I’m hoping it won’t take too long to process the winnings. I’ll let you know how the process of collecting my winnings goes and do a review of my experience with Healthy Wage once my bet has been paid.

August Safe Withdrawal Rate – 37.25%

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My SWR for August was 37.25%.  While writing this post I noticed that last month I stated my SWR rate was 37.58% in the post and 35.22% in the title. I’m not sure which one of those is correct.  Depending on which is correct my SWR either slightly improved or got a little worse. I didn’t add to my savings in August, but the stock market did pretty well so I think the SWR probably improved slightly.

My goal is to get the SWR down to 4% so the lower my SWR is the better. That goal is probably many years from being met. The 4% SWR translates into having 25x your annual expenses in savings or 300 months of expenses in savings. Once I reach that point I will consider myself financially independent.

I have 32.21 months of living expenses saved which is a slight improvement from 31.92 months saved in July. This amount went up due to the stock market rebound in August. I didn’t add to my savings in August.  I calculate my months of living expenses saved by dividing the average of my trailing twelve months of expenses by my total money saved. When I don’t add any money to my savings the only changes to my SWR and months of living expenses saved are from my investment performance and the average of my trailing twelve month’s of expenses going up or down.