No more Walmart shifts
Senior can retire through donations
01/12/2023 11:47 am
People of retirement age whose money is barely enough to live on. There are many of these in the US. Warren “Butch” Marion is one of them until his story goes viral on Tiktok.
Warren “Butch” Marion has long been a household name at Walmart in Cumberland, Maryland. Because the cashier is significantly older than his colleagues. But even at the age of 82, the Navy veteran regularly shows up for his eight to nine-hour shifts in the supermarket. However, the reason is not that Marion likes to work so much, but that his pension is not enough to live on.
Rory McCarty, who had previously seen a report about another elderly Walmart employee, also noticed this. The woman had said in a Tiktok video that she had to work at the retail chain to make ends meet. Shortly after, while shopping at his local Walmart, McCarty noticed Marion and understood that this man has the same problem. Many Americans struggle with saving enough money for retirement. According to the Federal Reserve, “One in four non-retirees say they have no retirement savings at all.”
In December, McCarty uploaded a video to Tiktok showing Marion at work. The entrepreneur combined the publication of the pictures with a request to his followers to help him and to enable Marion to retire through donations. At the same time he created one GoFundMe pagein which he posted a goal of raising $100,000 for the 82-year-old.
Relaxed retirement
He wanted to “help Marion spend the rest of his years visiting his kids in Florida,” McCarty wrote. The senior should be able to do things “that he would like to do that he may not be able to do for financial reasons”. The Tiktok video went viral, garnering over three million views and more than 300,000 likes in just a few days.
And not only that: Within a few days, the donation goal was not only reached, but even exceeded. Nearly $145,000 in donations has now been received for Marion. Thanks to these collective gifts, the 82-year-old can retire as early as the second week of January. McCarty gave him a check for the donation amount.
According to local media reports, the recipient was overwhelmed. “Wow” was Marion’s answer when the money was handed over to him. “I can only tell you that the Lord has blessed me for what I did when I was younger,” he told the Cumberland Times-News. He wants to use the money to pay off his house and retire from work.