This is a long time after, and maybe you won't see my response. But in fact for most of my adult life I have been dirt poor. I scraped by for years as a freelance musician. The decision I made as a high school student was that money wasn't important to me, which is why I chose a field that would make me happy instead of being lucrative.

The day job a I quit was a 34K/year entry level web dev gig that didn't pay me enough to live in NYC and do any saving. I quit without having any runway because I was miserable and decided that I had learned as much as I was going to there.

My point is that I've been poor, and decisions I've made about being happier have not involved making more money. I've been rethinking that decision lately.