Being a musician wasn't easy..... Although, I have to admit, it was a choice. One that was made easier, I might add, by my white male priveledge.

another adult to move in
Something like 80% of new businesses fail. If you get past the first couple of years and start profiting it's a good sign but how many can afford to operate at a loss the first few yrs? Not poor people

After I moved in with my parents, it was the only expense I had other then my car.

But some will always suggest it as a way to rise out of poverty . It can be done but not so easy as they say like Romney telling everyone to borrow $10k from their parents or if you are out of work move in with family. A lot of assumptions by people who haven't been there

I grew up in the lower upper class. Luckily I had resources after coming home.

I worked for a couple of years in a minimum wage, dead-end job when I was in my twenties. I had constant fears that I wasn't going to be able to pay my share of the rent (and sharing a place with a succession of unpleasant roommates was its own special kind of Hell...), and shopping even for necessities was always a matter of parsing scarce dollars.

OTOH, I was single, no children, I could walk to work (thereby avoiding the expense of a car) and had no major responsibilities besides keeping myself housed and fed. So I can't imagine the fears one has to live with if one has a family to support, or large bills to pay.

While I look back at that time through rose-colored glasses as a period without the obligations that go with a demanding career, a marriage, and a family, I don't really miss it.

I'm comfortably middle-class now, with a thriving, rewarding career. But I will advocate for the working poor until my dying breath.

We were fortunate to have a network of family and friends to offer moral support (and occasional financial support), but it was no picnic. There was never enough money or hours in the day. I felt like I was constantly struggling just to take care of basic necessities.

I'm happy to say that all my children have succeeded beyond my wildest dreams. They are all in stable relationships, own their own homes and have steady jobs that allow them to have a much higher standard of living than they grew up with.

and going to college. I worked in the school cafeteria in the mornings, I did filing for an insurance agent in the evenings and worked for an inventory company late nights and weekends. The community college had day, night and weekend classes. My girls were in daycare almost all of the time. I lived in a month to month 1 bedroom apartment in a bad part of town. I had no car, so it was either walking or taking the bus. By the end of the month I remember making mac and cheese with water because there was no milk. It was very hard. I did that for 2 years, but I knew that when I graduated things would get better, so I did it.
I will say that I did this when there were federal college grants and subsidized daycare so that made things much easier.

Being poor, with kids, no car, , never enough money, was the most exhausting, stressful part of my entire life.
and as you say, the goal was to be self sufficient and provide for the kids.

When you don't have transportation, you have to get up very early to walk the kids to the daycare, then start hitch hiking to the classes 60 miles away, and of course the first year you have to take 8 am courses.
then reverse repeat the process, get the kids, make dinner, feed them, eat the left overs if there are any, tuck the kids into bed at 9 pm, then do the reading and writing for the classes, till midnight, often, get up at 5 am and do it allover again.

I was absolutely scrawny, always tired, constantly afraid that the littlest problem would derail the entire plan. No family support at all. Occasional weekends when the ex-husband could take the kids, I would do nothing but sleep almost the entire weekend.

all of that at a time when there WAS daycare, work-study, grants for affordable classes. But I had to make consistently high grades to be eligible for more aid to take more classes.

"the miracle is not that it was done well, but that it was done at all" ....a phrase I remember from that time, so applicable to all of us ( and there were SO many) who managed to overcome a miserable destiny.

I was the first person in 3 generations of family to get a college degree, at a time when a High school diploma was a lofty goal for my mother's generation.

transportation. At this point if you are now in the situation we were in things will not get better.

Worked my job, a second job and a weekend job delivering pizza. Did that for just over a year until I improved my skill set and was able to move up in my primary job and dropped my weekend job.

By three years in, I was just down to the main job.

Our family, wife and three kids, lived tight. The saying about eating only beans and rice really did apply to us during that period. One time we had some extra grocery money and treated the kids to something special, Fruit Loops cereal. They acted like Santa himself arrived.

Those were good times looking back on it. Made us closer as a family and taught the kids a great lesson which we see in their lives today.

When I got married in the 70's we lived paycheck to paycheck.

We’d go to the grocery store with a hand held calculator and add up each item we put in the shopping cart.
Often we had to take items back out before going to the cashier.
Ate a lot of rice, pasta, and beans.

as a freelance illustrator than substitute teacher. I worked at 14 jobs in 10 years selling everything from snacks at the supermarket, to Epiladies (those things that rip your hair out of your skin), 45 min. phone surveys, etc. The most I was ever paid was $8/hour (I was elated to get that!) and I worked 2 to 3 jobs at the same time all those years without two consecutive days off. The cost of living in CA is really high.

But I have read Nickled and Dimed.