Money is just the messenger in the economy - it transmits information to you about what roles might or might not be valuable, and from you as to what goods and services you would like to consume. It's not hard to stay out of debt - you simply have to heed the message that money is transmitting to you.
Poverty is a wider question, and includes whether or not it is fair & just that some people have to make the sacrifices needed to stay out of debt. When I say that you can simply choose not to send your kids to college to avoid taking on crippling student loan debt, that is a 100% factually true statement. When you then say "But one shouldn't have to forgo an education to avoid going into debt", that's a normative statement. It's one that I'd probably even agree with you on, but it's a much broader conversation with no clear answers about how to fix it or even what the problem definition is.