It's not even about that. It's that being poor is expensive. So, here's an example: when I would buy shoes, which were usually boots (I lived on a farm), you could get a pair at a place like Sears. They were maybe, I dunno, $20-$30 at the time. They would fall apart within a year. Every year, let's say, $30-$60, just on replacing my shoes. Then, one year, I decided to save up _all_ of my money, including gifts, and bought a pair of Doc Martens for $120. Those shoes lasted me for almost a decade, because they were significantly higher quality. $12/year, actually cheaper than the poorer quality boots. But that wouldn't help if I couldn't put the $120 together to actually buy them, which was true most of the time.
A lot of being poor is like this. You can only afford cheap stuff, and cheap stuff breaks a lot and needs to be replaced often. It's expensive to be poor.