This is what I did with my Rogue. Did missions for Rogues and attacked NPCs for valuable loot, sold it to traders of morals questionable enough to work with a Rogue until I could buy a Werewolf and kit it out. Eventually after pirating in that for a while, got around 30 million, and used it to buy a pirate train on the forums. Don't know if this counts as cheating or not, but I used only money that I'd earned on the Werewolf. I also sold the Werewolf after I bought the ship.
Also, I don't bring money into the profile, but I send out money from it. I usually keep around 5-10 million credits on it for repairs, and if I earn more than that I send it to my bank/trader character.
EDIT: oops, now that I think about it, I brought in some credits to buy a junker bribe so I could land on the Rogue bases when I started:(
Thanks to MikeyH for the banner.
Reverend Del Wrote:I was going to turn your ship into something that would have been better named "Lada" but I was told to be nice.