Since we've gotten into finance: A friend of mine (about 40ish) always paid cash for everything. He'd accumulate enough to pay for whatever he was going to get before hand. Then he decided to buy a new car and take out a loan. He got quite an eye opener when he found out he had a low credit score and his interest rate was going to be twice what a high score would have been. He felt he'd done a good job managing money, which he had but that's not what the banks look at. They want to know how well you can handle debt, not money.