I understand what you're saying - I've known people who would say things like "even the cheapest groceries cost me $100, I can't afford them!" when they could instead suffer through a few months of eating nothing but ramen noodles and multivitamins in order to save up some money for cases like these. A terrible few months that they don't deserve, but a worthy sacrifice to allow for a better life in the future. A lot of us have had to do it, and many of us are in a stable financial situation now because of such past sacrifices.

However, I've also known people who were already eating nothing but ramen, and were already living out of their car, and were already sneaking into the gym to shower, and still couldn't save any money, often because it's very difficult to get a job when you're already that far down to rock bottom. You're thinking people can't get that low - that they can always go a bit lower for the sake of saving up enough money to escape that life - but there are enough people so far down that you can't assume any given person has the option to go lower.