I think this is meant to highlight how expensive it is to be poor, not to serve as financial advice for purchases.
I completely agree with you that it's unhelpful as financial advice but I think the idea behind it is to point out that because poverty forces people to buy substandard products or not products in bulk, it ends up more expensive in the long run
I'm about to be one of those grads, career changing in my early thirties. Whoops. Got into Berkeley CS so hopefully that carries my foot into a door somewhere