the working poor; Hand to Mouth

Linda Tirado was barely getting by financially when she posted about the hardships with being in the working poor.  Her online post spiraled into a book that has helped explain the difficulties of living at the poverty line even with a job.  Here is an excerpt from Slate.

--> And this is my bottom line point about work and poverty: It’s far more demoralizing to work and be poor, than to be unemployed and poor. I have never minded going without if I wasn’t working. It sucks not to be able to find a job, but you expect to be tired and pissed off and never to be able to leave your house if you’re flat broke. 
Here is an interview with the author from NPR's onpoint.  You can listen to an hour-long show about the book and living at low income.
 

Because our lives seem so unstable, poor people are often seen as being basically incompetent at managing their lives. That is, it’s assumed that we’re not unstable because we’re poor, we’re poor because we’re unstable. So let’s just talk about how impossible it is to keep your life from spiraling out of control when you have no financial cushion whatsoever. And let’s also talk about the ways in which money advice is geared only toward people who actually have money in the first place.

Here is an interview from the Guardian with the author.