Jasmine Birtles
Your money-making expert. Financial journalist, TV and radio personality.
How to make money by getting healthy
Reading Time: 4 minutesNeed an incentive to get out and get healthy? Good news! The MoneyMagpie team has uncovered a myriad of ways to make money by getting healthy and we can’t wait to share them with you.
From utilising your health insurance to playing guinea pig for clinical trials, here are a few surprisingly simple ideas.
Apps that pay
With smartphones pretty much being extensions of our bodies these days, it’s hardly surprising that there are a wealth of apps out there to help you get fit.
While all of them offer some sort of incentive or encouragement, we’ve found two UK-based options that will actually reward your efforts with some well-deserved cash… in one form or another.
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Bounts
In order to receive rewards from Bounts, you will need another fitness tracking app or device to gather statistics on your daily activity levels.
But once you’ve connected Bounts to your fitness tracker of choice, it will immediately start converting your steps into points and rewarding you for getting healthy.
If you’re using a step-counting device such as a FitBit, you will need to do at least 7000 steps a day to qualify for points. The minimum requirement for apps such as RunKeeper or Strava is a 20 minute walk/run above an average speed of 4km/h per day.
Users receive 20 points per activity and can earn up to 180 points a day.
These points can then be redeemed for exclusive offers, discounts and vouchers at various retailers and big name brands. Just take note that it may take a while to accumulate enough points to get shopping – just to give you an idea: 1800 points would roughly translate into a £5 Amazon voucher.
Click here for more details.
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Sweatcoin
Similar to Bounts, you keep the Sweatcoin app open in your phone’s background and it will track your movement throughout the day, rewarding you with 1 Sweatcoin for every 1000 steps.
What makes this app a little different, however, is the fact that it actually specifically encourages getting healthy outdoors by not rewarding users for any indoor activity.
Once you’ve accumulated a number of Sweatcoins, you can start exchanging them for offers in the app. These offers can be absolutely anything – digital watches, online memberships, food, drinks, shoes, clothes, running gadgets, music/software downloads, digital services, and more.
Since Sweatcoin is basically a micro currency, you are also able to buy, sell and earn with it. However, it’s going to take a little bit of research and practice to get it just right.
Find out more on the Sweatcoin website.
Health insurance rewards
Whether you’ve opted to invest in private health insurance or rely on the NHS, chances are pretty good that you may not be making the most of the incentives they offer you to live your healthiest life.
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Vitality rewards
The moment you sign up for one of Vitality’s health insurance plans, you can start earning points for getting healthy.
Similar to the apps mentioned earlier, you can gain points for tracking your daily activity. Incentives start with as little as 12 points a week – which roughly translates to 12,500 steps in a day twice a week – which can be redeemed for a Starbucks drink and a cinema ticket.
Up this to 880 points in one go when you do an online health review and take a Vitality Healthcheck. Once you’ve accumulated enough, you can use these points to purchase anything from spa treatments to airplane tickets.
Check out the Vitality website for more details on their reward system.
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NHS incentives
While they haven’t been approved just yet, NHS has come up with some radical proposals to reward your attempts at getting healthy with up to 25 per cent off weekly grocery purchases. Furthermore they seem to be taking a page out of Vitality’s book, looking to reward clients who achieve 12, 500 steps or more at least three times a week with free cinema tickets.
These ideas focus on ‘new towns’ and an effort to “design-in” healthy lifestyles by providing new homes with free bikes and equipping neighbourhoods with outdoor gyms and pavements with sprint tracks.
Apart from this, as the largest employer in the EU, NHS is also leading the charge for corporates and companies who want to encourage a culture of getting healthy among staff members. They will be offering financial incentives for increased activity, as well as regular mental and physical health checks.
Read more about these financial incentives on the NHS website.
Clinical trials
Taking part in paid clinical trials can be a way to make a lot of money in a short amount of time, but there are serious potential downsides so be very clear about those if you go in for this.
Depending on what kind of trial you take part in, how invasive the trials are and how long they take, you can earn anything from £100 to about £4,000.
Other ideas
- Become a personal trainer and make money exercising
- Dog walking – make £60 an hour while getting fit
- Make money selling healthy snacks
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Some interesting apps and websites here.