I am friends with a camgirl who is a prime example of this. In her case, she made a go of full-time camming, and thought she was doing well. What she didn't understand is that the site she worked for paid her as a contractor and withheld nothing. She never thought much about taxes, and all her previous jobs had withheld taxes, so she didn't pay quarterly estimated taxes. Last month, when she went to file her taxes, she realized she owed thousands. She has been struggling to pay this while other unexpected expenses mount (car repairs). She's struggling with the decision on whether to pay her taxes or her rent, and is about to become homeless.
The super irritating thing to me is that she had a gofundme setup for her friends and family to donate to help with her tax issue. The campaign was going well (close to 50% complete) but gofundme took it down and refunded all the donations. This was likely because they don't want to be associated with sex workers, and she apparently had a link to it from her cam-site page.
She can pay in installments vs the entire sum at once: https://www.irs.gov/payments/payment-plans-installment-agree...
But credit rating counts for a lot.
Even if they can prove sufficient steady income, if they don't have a good credit rating, there's a good chance they are unable to get a bank loan, credit card (or additional credit if they have a card already), and perhaps not even a small overdraft.
I can't speak for the US, but in the UK, even "payday lenders" who charge >1000% APR rates will no longer lend to someone with a poor credit rating.
On top of that, for someone who isn't used to it, and who already lives on the edge of what they can afford, "thousands", probably at high interest, is a big loan they may reasonably worry would put them into an unrecoverable debt spiral.
Counseling works for broke families - not poor ones. 6-months of savings and all the financial discipline in the world won't do you any good when you get a medical emergency that costs 5-years worth of family-income and leaves one spouses unable to work (or both! Caretakers are expensive). You can't budget your way out of poverty.
My wife and I had little savings when I got out of graduate school. Neither of our parents had taught us about budgeting. I found books that taught us how to make a monthly budget. The authors stressed the importance of working together to plan a budget and setting a goal of saving for an emergency fund that would eventually cover six months expenses. We drove our old car until it was too expensive to repair. Eating out was a rare treat. I carried a bag lunch to work. We bought a used tent and camping supplies for a vacation. We had a used B&W TV for years. We were able to purchase a modest house. We never upgraded to a bigger one. A careful lifestyle helped us get our kids though state universities with no debt.
In time we could add more "fun" items because we had a buffer. We were still careful. My employer had perennial layoffs. We knew I could be laid off at any time. Happily, I was ready to retire when my time came (My company went from 65,000 employees in our city to less than 1,700 when I was laid off).
I have a friend who ran his own computer business and counseled (free of charge)many families with money problems. His conclusion was that lack of money was not the biggest problem these families had. He concluded that poor management of what they had was a bigger problem.
[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/most-americans-cant-afford-a-50...