My niece was in that situation -- she always had the latest iPhone, drove a nice (leased) car, went out to nice bars with friends, had nice clothes (but worked

My niece was in that situation -- she always had the latest iPhone, drove a nice (leased) car, went out to nice bars with friends, had nice clothes (but worked in a mall, so at least the clothes were inexpensive). Turns out she was racking up 10's of thousands of dollars of credit card debt and skimping on necessities -- literally eating Ramen noodles at home and food she scavenged from friends at the mall, she wasn't paying her gas bill and got cut off after she accumulated over $3000 of unpaid bills (in the winter she heated only the bedroom of her apartment with a space heater), etc. It all started falling apart when she got pneumonia and was off work for a few weeks and couldn't pay any of her bills. She had some of the accoutrements of a high standard of living, but was still very much living in poverty. She's living with her mom now and working on paying down the debt.