People of EarnIn: Dion Whatley

Dion Whatley is determined to provide for his family any way that he can. Follow his story as he tells us about getting laid off, finding a new job, getting injured, and how EarnIn helped him keep moving forward:

“When I first moved back to South Jersey I was able to find a position as a temporary worker for TD bank. I worked my way up for seven years and went from being a cost center representative to approving small business loans. Then last year, they laid off half of the building, and I was the only one laid off on my team. At the time, me, my wife, and my two kids were living in our own townhouse. We were financially independent. When I got laid off, my wife suggested that we move in with her mom. Initially, I told my wife, “We can do this.” Long story short, happy wife, happy life. So, I had to suck it up and move in with her mother and sister.

At the time, my sister-in-law worked for Amazon. She had worked there for like six or seven years, and she told me all about it. I was like, all right, I'll try it out. Because when you're living with your wife, your mother-in-law, and your sister-in-law, you can't just be in the house collecting unemployment. So, I had to get off my behind and do something.

I was at Amazon, and I was working so hard that every single day, they would come to me and ask, “Can you also do this over here? Also do that over there.” I started doing something called water spidering, which is basically getting a pallet Jack and filling it up with boxes. You pull it to another location and then you unload the boxes. When you unload them, you put the boxes on the belt. Well, on July 1st, 2020, I went to take a box that was all the way at the bottom to put it on the belt. However, the box was so heavy, I hit the belt instead, and a pain went through both of my shoulders. I had to drop the box, the pain was that intense. I worked through it thinking that the next day, it would get better.

I go to sleep that night, and I wake up, and I can't move. My shoulders were hurting so bad so I’m like “I have to go to the hospital now.” I had to get an MRI done and they found that I had tennis elbow in both of my elbows. My doctor said I was going to need surgery. When the box hit that belt, my shoulders went forward, and I broke the socket in my right shoulder. I had the surgery, and I’ve been doing physical therapy.

I was getting a workman's comp, but it wasn't a full paycheck amount. When that was going on, EarnIn came into use more than ever before because I needed it to supplement my income. There are so many people also using EarnIn. Not only does EarnIn help people individually, but it also helps people to see that whether you're white, black, brown, purple, green, yellow, blue, we're all in situations where we need funds like this, where we need an app like this.

Our community members all come from different backgrounds and we want to share them! We all have a common ground and that’s wanting to get to a better financial situation.