I invite you to read this post by Anna, a sex worker in Portland, Oregon. Excerpt:
Before I started escorting, I often just didn’t eat on my days off (I worked in a kitchen and was allowed to eat whatever I wanted at work, so that was helpful). I often didn’t have $2.50 to ride the bus. I don’t mean I just didn’t have any cash on hand, I literally didn’t possess two dollars and fifty cents, nothing in the bank or anything. One time my bike got a flat tire and I didn’t have the $4 to buy a new tube and I didn’t have $2.50 to take the bus to work even just one way so I had to walk the 12 miles round trip to work and back for a couple days until I got paid.
This is an adult woman; gainfully employed, in a minimum wage job; without children; without apparent alcohol troubles, or drug habits.

After doing lovely work like scrubbing toilets all day, 90% of her income would go for rent and taxes.