A late payment is a delinquency of 30 days or more on any account (installment or revolving), reported by the creditor to the credit bureaus.

It’s important to understand that a partial payment may be considered as late. For example, if your scheduled payment is $50 and you make a payment of $45, a late payment can still report on your credit history if it’s over 30 days past due.

The good news is that even if you pay your account 25 days late, a late payment will NOT be reported to the credit bureaus.

If you’re going to be late, make sure that you make your payment before it becomes 30 days past-due and pay the account in full, including any late fees.

Ideally, you should try to pay all of your bills on time.

A single 30-day late payment can drop a FICO credit score 100 points.

Recent late payments are more damaging to credit scores than late payments which occurred a long time ago. Late payments within the last 6 months impact your credit scores the most.

Late payments within the last 2 years have less impact. And lates outside of 2 years have the least amount of impact on your credit scores.

A 60-day late payment will lower your scores more than a 30-day late. And a 90-day late payment will hurt your credit scores even more.

Try to limit your late payments and pay your bills on time.

In the event an account is more than 180-days late, the creditor may charge off the account.

This means that the creditor/lender writes the debt off as a loss on their books.

This doesn’t mean that the debt just goes away. The creditor can still continue to try and collect on the debt.

The account will then be reported to the credit reporting agencies (CRA) as a charge off/ profit and loss write-off.

Eventually, the creditor may send the debt to a collection agency.

Being late on any bill for any length of time negatively affects your FICO credit score.

Credit Firm has helped thousands of clients delete accounts with late payments from credit reports and repair derogatory accounts by removing late payments from the accounts. If you have a late payment reporting on your credit report, contact Credit Firm to fix your credit report and raise your credit score.

A late payment reporting on your credit reports is going to cause substantial negative issues to your credit scores.

Catching up on the account and bringing it to a good (on-time) standing should be your top priority.

Most lenders will be averse to lending to you if you have any late payments reporting in your credit reports within the last 6 months.

Work on stringing together 6 months of perfect payment history. Once the late payment is over 6 months old your scores should start coming back up.

You should also try to be proactive and work on removing the late payment from your credit reports.

A goodwill letter is a good place to start when trying to remove the late payment.

If a goodwill request doesn’t work you can try disputing the late payment, although the probability of removing the late through a dispute is very low.

You may have more luck with a document request, asking for corroborating documents to prove the occurrence of late payment.

Be proactive. Catch up on your bills and work on removing the derogatory mark off your credit reports.

CreditFirm.net has helped thousands of clients improve their credit scores and remove late payments from their credit reports.

If you have a late payment on your credit report contact CreditFirm.net to find out how we can help fix your credit and improve your credit scores.