How Much Pact Pays Me To Exercise [Updated 2017-07]

UPDATE: As of July 2017 the Pact service has shutdown.

The idea of getting charged for failing to meet my fitness goals was off-putting at first. Now the idea of being paid for meeting them was a lot more appealing. Pact is a mobile app which encourages healthier behavior by charging users who fail to meet their goals and rewarding those who meet them. Before starting it I wanted to know if the rewards were worth the work. Some articles mentioned vague amounts after a few months of use, but nothing with a breakdown per activity. So I’ve made one that is automatically updated weekly from my data.

Graph of max possible last week
This completionist graph shows that one can typically earn the most from veggies in a week. Though at 5 per day that’s a total of 35 photos to submit.

Graph of earnings per activity
As can be seen each individual activity does not pay much, and clearly exercise is the highest payout. But committing to a dozen or so activities per week does provide a nice little bonus for exercise and healthier eating. So far I get about $8 per month by exercising 6 days, logging one day, and recording veggies half the week. Even if the reward were only a few pennies I’ve found the bonus improves my consistency. Avoiding being charged for failure certainly motivates as well.

Around the 2014 holidays the payout was a little higher. So I imagine the busyness and temptations of that season made reaching these goals more challenging. Regardless, despite some misses, these kinds of pacts can provide the needed push to get one moving more and eating healthier. If you’re on the fence I’d recommend giving it a try with some modest goals.

Disclosure: I’m not affiliated with Pact, Inc. (a.k.a. Gym-Pact) except as a user of their app and service. The data provided is my own, and it cannot predict future earnings.

VeraCrypt Is Too Slow And Complex

Now that more Truecrypt weaknesses have been revealed the open-source solution taking its place appears to be VeraCrypt. Yet its extra-secure encryption of the system partition adds so many rounds booting is slowed and the extra PIM concept mandates an extra step to every startup. This situation makes it even less suited to non-technical users than TrueCrypt before it.

Steve Gibson may be ready to recommend VeraCrypt, but I don’t think it’s ready for the masses; up to version 1.15 anyway. After clocking my boot time with system encryption it took an extra 85 seconds. Talking non-technical friends and family through even basic use of TrueCrypt volumes was challenging enough. VeraCrypt’s additional Personal Iteration Multiplier certainly adds more security. Still, the extra step and forgettable-yet-necessary element is only making it less novice friendly.

Another long term problem is VeraCrypt’s lack of Secure Boot support. This prevents booting with whole-disk encryption on machines locked down within UEFI’s boot-loader signing. Hopefully VeraCryp support will be done before Secure Boot becomes widespread.

Now having tried the built-in encryption features of Windows, OS X, and Ubuntu Linux the VeraCrypt software does still offer a nice cross-platform solution. The VeraCrypt UI is also easier than Linux, though it has a way to go before being as easy as Windows and OS X. With a little UX love and simpler defaults VeraCrypt has the potential to offer a compelling alternative for regular folks.