Its true, its much better to buy steem especially whilst under a dollar and as I learnt earlier in life, you do need money to make money.. But atleast with Steem it will rise 10fold easily and money money will soon be worthless, so on the big picture its best to save money and buy steem instead of having even small bits of cash here and there.
For people who cant buy steem there is the leaseing out of steem power from minnowbooster.net which can be used to get more sp from curating etc..
Totally get where your comming from though!