I used to minister to the homeless and would hear stories like that. Dudes making 80-100k per year, everything going good and living in a decent house in paradise (San Diego). No family other than a wife, she gets laid off, ends up getting cancer. They spend a grip on her cancer treatments, and halfway through that, he gets laid off. She died because of the cancer and he was left with 10's of thousands of dollars in bills and nowhere to go with an expensive house payment he could no longer afford and no job. There was a grip of competition in San Diego when I lived there and it was hard for a long time.
Everyone should have money saved up, but a lot of people still live paycheck to paycheck. Things happen. I struggled for quite awhile to get back on my feet and working 60 hour+ weeks but I did it.