[dcherman]

You do need credit though unless you never intend on financing a car or purchasing a house with a mortgage.

While it may be entirely feasible to get along your entire life without financing a car by either purchasing used cars or inexpensive new ones, for 99% of people ( including myself ), it's extraordinarily difficult to purchase a home in a reasonable amount of time ( 10-15+ years saving required for a barebones house most likely ).

You could argue that prices are like this due to the easy availability of credit ( see 2008 or the problems with student loans/college prices ), but that doesn't change the reality that some things are extremely expensive and for nearly all people will require some type of loan. At that point, not having a good credit score will cost you dearly in much higher interest rates.

As for my kitchen, the reason you gave it exactly the reason that I did it. Although I did net an additional 100$ or so in interest over the course of the year as well due to it being in my savings account ( yay!...kinda? ), the primary reason was in the event of an emergency. Any emergency that would require an additional $10,000 is likely to be medical, family, or loss of job related. Since I have insurance, that means that the most likely scenario is family or job related; in either instance, the availability of cash to help a member of my family out or pay my mortgage for 6 months would be more important to me than the costs associated with financing that card for a period of time. In addition, I would still be able to pay the card off by selling a bit of stock, however I wanted the additional liquidity by having cash on hand. I don't make decisions like that lightly; all of those scenarios were considered before I decided to go the 0% card route.

[balabaster]

Having financed my last 6 cars - all bar one of them from new and having made a vehicle payment every month of my adult life, I've learned that financing new vehicles is a fools errand. What you get in perceived reliability (and it frequently is only perceived), you lose in depreciation the minute it gets driven off the lot. When I've paid the final payment on my vehicle this month, I will continue paying that same amount into an account until this vehicle dies or has a repair bill beyond what it would cost me to replace it. I predict (hopefully accurately) that if I continue to look after it well, I should have plenty enough money in the bank to purchase my next (nearly-new-but-used-and-still-has-warranty) vehicle outright with someone else having taken the depreciation hit instead of me. Admittedly, I got to where I did now with credit, so my picture isn't black and white. I could have continued to use my bike for a few years, putting aside the money for a vehicle until I had enough to pay outright, I didn't - but that was the impatience of youth. If I'd had no/bad credit at the time, I'm sure being who I am, I would have found another way.

As for a house, it definitely doesn't take 10-15 years if you think outside the box cultured by our society.