People of EarnIn: Dalia Raya

Typically, being a new college graduate can be tough, but not for Dalia. Fresh out of college, she’s ready to tackle her career goals as well as her financial goals head on. Follow along as she shares her career aspirations and tells the story of how EarnIn helped her purchase her little puppy! Here’s her story:

“I just turned 23 and graduated just a bit ago from Indiana University Bloomington with a speech and hearing degree. Now I’m working with autistic people in Indiana. I would say I'm stable financially. I think I'm doing much better than most fresh out of college, but besides being stable, I want to be more on top of my finances. I’ve recently acquired a hand at budgeting since my aunt is an accountant and she's taught me more about how to budget my money for current and future situations because things happen all the time.

I'm also working on my savings and learning how to budget for my five-year plan. Within the next five years, I'm hoping to work my way up the chain, maybe acquire another degree, and elevate my status within my company. I want to stay with the company for a little while so I can build up more of my resume and my CV for my career. In terms of finances, I'm just hoping to build my savings account and maybe relocate to a different area for my job, and build up my home life better. I'm originally from the Chicago area so I've been thinking of moving back. I just love the city and I kind of miss it. That's what I've been working towards. Now that I'm out of college, I'm not living in a dorm and I want to get my house settled so that requires lots of budgeting as well.

Outside of work, I’m a very hands-on person, so I like to stay busy. I do lots of painting, I read lots of books, and I recently got a dog, a beagle and corgi mix. Getting a dog has taught me a lot about finances. I've learned that dogs are very expensive and it’s definitely fantastic to plan ahead. I'm glad that I recently learned how to budget prior to getting him but it was a very last minute decision. The person that I got my dog from told me the puppies were in high demand but I didn't know how I was going to get the money to get him right away. But I was like, “There's no way I'm passing up this pup. I really, really want this dog.”

So me and my roommate were hanging out in my room and I told him about this dog that I really wanted to get. I used to be a server and in serving, you get your money the same day. Besides serving, there's really no way for that to happen and there's definitely no way that I’d want to go back to a serving job after having settled into my career. So, I was thinking out loud and I asked, “How do I get access to this money without going back to serving?” That's when he had a light bulb moment and he referred me to EarnIn. He said that EarnIn gave him access to his funds sooner so I downloaded EarnIn, and that’s exactly how I paid for my dog. I wasn’t too far off financially, so EarnIn literally could not have come at a better time. It was awesome.”

We love hearing and sharing our community members’ stories! Our goal is to help you get to a better place financially because we want to see you succeed! Share your story with us at stories@earnin.com!