down-at-the-heel

Indeed, it would be hard to imagine a more uninteresting, bedraggled, down-at-the-heel place than this.

We had evidently caught the household stripped of lugs, and sunk in the down-at-the-heel slovenliness which it called comfort.

He put her into a fashionable school and bade her have nothing more to do with those 'down-at-the-heel Bonnivels.'

He loathed the shabbiness of it, and the suggestion of germs, decay, down-at-the-heel poverty added to his depression.

We had evidently caught the household stripped of "lugs," and sunk in the down-at-the-heel slovenliness which it called "comfort."

Why do we associate money questions with that which is unhappy, unfortunate, down-at-the-heel, with fear and misery?