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Notes -
They don't think about using credit, on principle.
I'm from a very similar background to your co-workers -- lower-middle class, not coastal -- and it was drilled into my head from a young age that debt meant slavery and you use credit cards only and exclusively to build credit for mortgages or cars (if you have to), and you must pay it off each month, and preferrably keep your credit utilization low. My parents have a solid nest-egg and little debt, but if you talked to them about money you'd think they were constantly in danger of bankruptcy. In their household, paying interest on a credit card even one month is something close to a mortal sin -- it's just unthinkable.
While I think this is probably an overreaction to the problems of debt, I suspect it's the same sort of cultural overreaction that made Baptists go hard against liquor. The American frontier was full of drunks -- literally, there were stories of preachers having their church ransacked by drunk mobs on Sunday morning. So the clergy who ministered to them (mostly congregationalists, Methodists, and Baptists) ended up taking the nuclear option: "You people obviously can't handle your booze, so we're going full abstentionist, no liquor at all, you show up drunk and we're disfellowshipping you. Shape up, you sinners."
And that view became crystalized and theologized from a discipline based on prudence to a definitive theological approach of Methodists and Baptists, the same way that clerical celibacy in the Latin Church went from a discipline based on preventing the direct inheritance of parishes to (in the trad days) a definitive theological approach where clergy are seen as marrying the Church.
Nowadays, the American interior (where evangelicals are the primary ministers, interestingly enough) is now full of people trapped in debt. So, the approach of normie American interior culture is shaped by this problem in a similar way alcohol to how alcohol shaped the frontier, eschewing it totally because of the potential for abuse (and perhaps because it signals separation from less conscientous people for whom debt is less controlled). I think in religious terms, so what strikes me is how this gets tangled up in the prosperity gospel, producing "supernatural debt cancellation", the favorite of slimy televangelists the world over. Call it evangelicals finally figuring out usury is supposed to be a sin.
Your parents are right about credit card interest.
That improperly risk-averse position is not having/using one for regular spending instead of a debit card.
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