I have a friend about my age that has a zero credit rating.

Zero. 

Not good, not bad. We generally agree that having a zero credit rating can be worse than a bad one because one in that situation is a loose cannon.

It probably drives the system nuts. 

He's never had a car payment, never had a mortgage, yet he owns a decent car and has a pretty good place too live. He paid cash.

When he was younger he went to sea and simply stayed there for a while, being frugal while he was on shore leave and when he had enough to buy a place outright he did.

Actually he bought a lot somewhere and built the place with his hands. The lot was located well, too. It was semi rural but eventually it bacame a sparse residential neighborhood and his real estate value went up expoentially.

He also bought a decent used pickup.

The house is a basic place, a simple Cape and eventually he married and raised a couple of kids in it. He still lives there. 

After he had his house built he switched from deep sea and the long deployments and took a pay cut and worked the harbor tugs for the rest of his career. He took a pay cut of sorts but got more time to be with his new wife and kids and to help raise the kids.

The mortgage is the biggest expenditure one generally faces in his life and this guy got his out of the way early by sacrificing things at an early age and going without.

The second biggest expense for a person is generally car payments and this guy planned that one out, too. While he was running his used pickup he simply made an imaginary car payment to his bank account and considered it something he could not skip out on. He was disciplined.

He took care of the pickup and maintained it well and when it finally gave up the ghost he bought a new set of wheels by paying cash. Of course he continued making payments until he needed another car which he paid cash for.

So now here he is, in his mid 60s and has never taken out a loan in his life. He has a credit rating of zero.

Not bad when you think about it.

To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html