Poor people absolutely are wasting money but it doesn’t matter. I did it, everyone does it. The “wasting money” argument is hyper-analytical and not a productive accounting of human behavior. Almost no one in the US is literally negative on resources from all sources versus necessary expenses.

Around 10-15% of US households are living at the edge of their income. That is per the US Federal Reserve and BLS. This doesn’t account for the widely available government subsidies[0] for people in these income brackets.

Even in the worst cases, there is significant economic slack. Almost the entire time I lived below the poverty line I was usually able to save significant money in that context. So could have almost all of the poor people I knew. The exceptions always seemed to be old people living off Social Security. But they have their own safety nets.

I want proper support for people in poverty. That requires an objective accounting of the nature of their poverty that far too many people are incurious about. Everyone wants to make this way more complicated than it needs to be.

[0] A variety of subpopulations legitimately fall through the cracks and are excluded from significant government support. I was in those cracks.

It is really obvious that many people worried about the poor in the US know nothing at all about the actual poor in the US.