Reading your comment, if OP is still around to see this, I think their simulator should be more from a 3rd person perspective following 1 or several characters

Reading your comment, if OP is still around to see this, I think their simulator should be more from a 3rd person perspective following 1 or several characters who are poor, and where the player can listen to their inner voices, and/or make game choices for them and watch the characters stumble and maybe fail. Ideally the player gets attached to the characters and can feel sympathy as the hardness of poverty beats them up.