Why is it that the poor don't always behave in the way the middle classes think they should? How do people react to someone who claims social welfare but owns an iPhone?

Linda Tirado knows from experience what it is to be poor, to struggle to make ends meet. She has worked all hours as a food service worker in a chain restaurant to support her young family. She knows what it's like to have problems you wish you could fix, but no money, energy or resources to fix them, and no hope of getting any.

Tirado, who has worked as a general manager at a Burger King and a night cook at Ihop, as well as a voting rights activist for a disability nonprofit, knows what it’s like to live “hand to mouth”.

In 2013, she wrote an essay on the everyday realities of poverty online and it was read and shared over 7 million times and led to her writing a book about her experience to help open some closed minds.

In Hand to Mouth, she gives a clear-eyed insider account of being poor in the world's richest nation and spoke to Sean about it on today's show.