Being broke tests your values harder than being rich ever will.

Scarcity puts every principle under load at once. When there is enough, honesty and generosity are inexpensive and you never learn what they are made of; when there is not, each one carries a price you can feel. Holding a line while short of money is genuinely harder, and it deserves to be counted as an achievement rather than a baseline.

If you are in a tight stretch, decide which one or two lines are not up for negotiation and let the rest flex. Take the help that is offered, which is not a failure of independence. Notice what you are managing to hold.