+1 for the consideration of the long-distance relationship. I think the key to helping someone else with their relationship is to a) present your own experiences, having been through this yourself, and b) helping to think through a variety of options and trying on how they feel. Then said friend, in her own journey, can take steps as she feels they are right. I'm not a big fan of ultimatums or either/or approaches in relationships unless absolutely necessary; they usually just make one or the other person feel threatened or unsupported, and that doesn't help anything.
You are already, by the sounds of things, in a loving partnership, where hard choices have had to be negotiated in complicated realities. I would stress for your friend that in a real, loving partnership, both people should feel like they are getting treated as equals, with equally important needs that need to be addressed and supported. This, of course, does not mean that both people can have everything they want/every need met all the time, but each person needs to feel like they are being valued, and that they are troubleshooting issues *together*. Is this the case for her? If so, then she should feel comfortable sitting down with her partner and sharing her concerns: "I'm really struggling here. I want to be here with you, but I really can't make ends meet or find work. Can we think through *our* options and how we would feel about them?" Options could then include: joining finances and having him support her financially because having her with him is important enough for him to do so; having her pursue work options elsewhere that might include opportunities to travel to visit him and vice versa; breaking up to pursue other goals.
In our case, our careers also took us in different directions for a couple of of years. But we always felt like a team; I felt that I (the one who ended up elsewhere) had made a free choice to fulfill my own needs/career goals, and that this choice was completely supported by my now-DH. If the relationship had needed to end as we grew apart, we were ok with that, and both of us worked to make sure that it didn't come to that. In our case, the first year living apart confirmed that we wanted to spend the rest of our lives together, and set a wonderful precedent that honouring our own needs, even if that entailed some sacrifices, was important and not threatening. We have other friends who found that a year apart made it clear that they were happier on their own than together.