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I had a few years of young and dumb followed by struggling through the great recession that pretty well wrecked my credit early on.
I then went through a few years while rebuilding where I really dug into learning how the credit system works and gaming it to my advantage. It was literally a case of getting entertainment out of "number goes up." I got bored with it once my available lines of credit hit a couple multiples of my annual income, but the end result was having a basically perfect credit score.
It ultimately paid off when it came time to buy a car and get a mortgage. Basically had immediate access to the absolute best rates available and approvals have always gone super smooth.
The flip side of that is my SO who never went through the young and dumb stage and hadn't needed to rebuild credit, but had a similar "fuck credit" attitude as the OP so they'd never had credit in the first place. The fortunate thing there is we were able to jump start their credit history by adding them as an authorized user on one of my older accounts with a high line of credit -- this gave a massive boost to both average account age and available credit and pretty much instantly brought their score up from the 5-600s to low 700s. Add in a few more deliberate things like financing a car instead of paying cash and now they've got enough of a credit profile built up that it'll be okay if anything ever happens to me.
Obviously, that requires a lot of trust, but it's good info for relationships where one partner has established credit and the other doesn't.
My SO had untreated bipolar disorder when we met, so her credit was trash from forgetting to pay rent and her car frequently. I got her organized and on a schedule, and once she finally started taking care of herself again and got centered mentally, I spotted her a few hundred for a secured credit card to rebuild her score. She stayed on top of herself for a couple years, and went back to college seriously this time, so she needed a new car as it was over an hour away, so I cosigned for her to get her a decent rate. Now 2 more years later she has somewhere around 8k for a credit limit and a score in the mid 700s last I asked. So 5ish years to rebuild her wrecked credit. Now she's graduating this semester and already got a job offer for like 25% more than I make! Soon it's her turn to pay back my investments in her! 🤣