Excellent point. It's much too simplistic to just say "Debt is evil, pay-as-you go divine!"

And let's not forget the role of insurance in big and small (i.e. personal) SHTF situations. We can argue about the credit card versus savings account for SHTF situation all day, but a true SHTF situation is if you become disabled while still fairly young and can't ever work again. You'll really, really be grateful if you have decent disability insurance. None of us can save enough while we're still young to live on for decades in that situation. Well, not unless we invented Google or the iPod or something like that.