This article just made me want to say the following:
With a very few exceptions (most of which are on this board), if you're making $16K a year, you have, in Dave Ramsey's terms, a cash-flow (a.k.a., shovel) problem. Now, there are some folks on this board who, through a history of hard work, frugality, and savings, can live (maybe even comfortably) on $16K per year. The chances of that happening for someone in a Yahoo News Story, though, is slim-to-none.
For the vast majority of people, that type of wage is not going to allow them to do anything to meet their own "basic" needs (which probably include things like a cell phone, etc., and don't include things like an emergency fund, or retirement savings). At that level, it's probably best to say "how can I improve my earnings?" and "how can I cut my major expenses (e.g., cell phone, reducing car commute?)" rather than focusing on advanced topics (e.g., can I save $5/year by reusing toothpicks?).
That's not to say that looking at small amounts is not valuable -- I think that that type of examination is valuable, even though I used a sort of silly example above. However, it seems pretty clear that we all have a limited amount of willpower, and we should probably focus on areas that are more important to us, and let areas that are less important absorb some of the slack. I know this is particularly applicable to me!
So... I realize I don't have a monopoly on perspectives - comments welcome? That being said, I admit my first question was "how in the world does she shop at WP on that salary?" and my second question was "how in the world does she shop there and not pay attention to the prices!?!?"