There is one brutal truth about poverty that most people who aren't experiencing it refuse to believe.

And that truth is that it can happen to anyone. Any one of us could face a change in circumstances that turns everything we've worked for upside-down. You may have made the right decisions your entire life only to watch everything vanish. Our savings could be wiped out, our possessions destroyed, our health ruined, and our prospects dismal.

Poverty can happen to anyone whether you want to admit it or not. Especially now.

Many of us are unemployed or underemployed. We need a second mortgage to buy a cart full of groceries. Everything costs more money, and it's really hard for some of us to get by.

Having lived through these circumstances myself – and on more than one occasion – I cannot think back to a single purchase, decision, or error that singlehandedly caused my own fall from economic grace. Sure, I occasionally took my small children out for a Happy Meal at McDonald's or bought them some candy at the checkout line in the grocery store. But when you're talking about financial problems on the scale of losing your home or vehicle, a purchase of a few dollars here and there is unlikely to have been the entire cause of the catastrophe.