Tight budgeting, no extra for accidental/unplanned needs.

There's this woman who sells street meals, I often had meals there because she's nice and the meals were cheap. One day I invited her to go with me to a market to buy some fruits and stuffs. In the middle of our journey, she asked permission to stop for a while at a gold and jewelry shop, because she wanted to sell her gold earrings. I asked why, she said because they're too small and she never wore them anyway. She ended up selling her earrings cheaper than when she bought them, which made me suspicious because she refused to wait. So she decided to sell them, and then after she received the money, she said something like 'it's okay, when there's extra money I can buy them again'.

So I asked subtle questions because I wanted to know the reason, and later then she told me her kid's phone was stolen by her kid's friend. So she needed a new phone for his kid as his kid kept asking for it.

Which means, she did not have that amount of cash in hands (which's not much at all) to buy the phone, and had to sell her earrings.