To help, or not to help, that is the question!

I'm sure this kind of situation has happened to you at some point in your life, and if it hasn't, it probably will in the future.
Have you asked for any favors?   Have you received favors from someone before?  This kind of thing has become extremely tricky for me lately.
My life has been pretty much sucking for the last three or four years now.  I had a great stable job with a lot of potential to become a big healthy company whom I was going to work for more than likely the rest of my life with a good salary, but it went down.  The details of it don't matter, what matters is that I started depending on people's mercy for favors because I could no longer afford a living for myself and my three children, and at some point, my mom.
One of the first favors I received (quite big I must add) was that a debt was forgiven.  I had bought a Suburban from a friend of mine who was wealthier than I was.  When he knew I was out of a job for awhile and after I was late on a few payments, he decided to give me a break on the payments until I get back on my feet (which hasn't happened yet).  Two years later, he sent me an e-mail saying that he has forgiven all the debt I had with him and that he would send the title of the Suburban later.
That was two big favors I did not ask for, but welcomed with a very wide smile because I was incredibly broke and it was a wonderful break.
Later on, things didn't change too much until my current job, and even here; I was most of the time just sharing some of the issues I was going through and people were jumping at those "opportunities" to help me and I made the decision to take them because I always thought: "Any help will be welcome right now".  It wasn't always this way, most of the time, I didn't want to ask any favors from nobody and it didn't work too well.   It ended up being so bad that there were days when I didn't have a job, a home, money or food at all.  That's when I needed to ask favors and I did not because I was too proud to do it.
Now things have changed.  Now I am a bit more stable but I still needed lots of favors and then it turns out that I asked one favor too many and this person got so pissed that she just said: "This is ridiculous."  Which pretty much sums up: "I'm so pissed at you I don't even want to see you here again!"  Of course, that's only my interpretation and it doesn't mean it actually is like that literally.
But bottom line is that I want to throw a question up in the air: How are favors supposed to be asked?
Damn if I ask for favors and damned if I don't.  I'm sure there must be a balance, but so far, I haven't found it.
If you ask for favors, you're an abuser, if you don't ask for favors, you starve.  Something in the middle must be healthy.
I must admit that I am a social moron.  I cannot socialize to save my life !!  So there are tons of social rules I don't know about and I get burned because of my ignorance.
The answers to my question above seem very obvious, but they could be deep and may be full of exceptions.  Example: You ask a friend of yours for a ride to and from work every day for a week because your car is in the shop.  You have the bad habit of running late frequently or you're going through something in your life that prevents you from being solid on your schedule; at this point, the reasons why you're tardy are meaningless.  This friend of yours gives you a speech every day because you were late seven minutes one day, two minutes the next, three minutes the next and it turns out that it'll be easier (and more expensive of course) to rent a car and stop asking favors so your friend will spare you the daily speech.  You know you're late, you know what you're going through, you don't like being late, you don't want to be late, you plan every day not to be late and most of the time your plan doesn't work out because of situations that are out of your control for the time being.  But the speech from your friend doesn't end and you really don't need it.
My solution to that problem was: Spend $150 on a rental car for a week to stop the preaching.
What would you have done?
There are plenty of examples in which the solutions or the answers are not so straight up and simple.
Now I'm so confused that I don't know if I should ask for favors or not anymore.  I came to the conclusion that people expect something in return for helping you, even if they say they don't.  Which makes this worse is when you offer money to pay for the favor and your friend doesn't accept it.  That puts you in a way worse situation, because what's going to happen is that if that friend is on a bind now and asks you for help, you have to drop everything you're doing like a hot potato and go help him/her because "you owe him/her".  What if you can't at that specific moment?  What if you don't have the resources to help your friend in need?  You will obviously explain the situation and hope your friend will understand and won't take it against you; but you could also lose your friendship over that because "after so many things he/she's done for you, you don't even have one hour to help him/her", which is completely false, but people keep that impression forever only because you were too stupid to accept a favor.
Now, on the other side, if you don't accept favors and always ask "how much will you charge for that?" Then people get offended.  People then think they've lost your friendship because you're just trading money for help like if they were whores for hire in the street.  Again, a false perception of things but people will still have them for no justified reason.
I only want to pay for the favor right then and there so I don't go through scenario number one above.  But this puts me in scenario number two: "A friend doesn't expect payment for doing a favor."  Which to a certain extent could be true; however, this binds you again to that person because now your availability is compromised because of the favor that friend did for you.
I'm not sure there's any way out of this except when you're rich and you pay for everything you need.  Then, when you have a party you know your friends are fake because they will be with you because you're rich and you're hosting an expensive party; but as soon as you lose your fortune, the friends are gone, which makes them acquaintances, more than friends.
So I still don't know how to level things out between friends and favors.  I guess all I can do is give and do favors for others, but always pay for things I need to do, or do them myself if I can; and if I can't, then don't do them.  That way I can keep my friends, never owe any favors and still have some of the stuff I need done.
Another friend of mine has a booklet which has many strange phrases.  One of them is: "Don't do me any favors" and I guess that's what I'll do, don't ask for any favors anymore and let's see how things go.
Thanks for reading!!!