I Paid My Bill Late, Now What?
Filed Under (Credit Card Tips) by creditblogger on 16-10-2008
Being trustworthy is more important now more than ever. Your FiCO score is used by financial companies to determine your riskiness and can determine how high your interest rates will be. So you have been late a couple of months. How does it affect your FiCO? Simply, it’s not going to be great for your score. But a lot of companies have different policies about what and when they report to FiCO. Believe it or not there are a few small credit card companies that only report you to FiCO if you are more than 30 days late. Most credit card companies reserve the right to discuss your credit issues with the bureaus, but a lot of them only report derogatory items, and some only report serious items.
If you have paid your bill late just one time, there is a good chance that you may be forgiven by your card issuer. In addition, that will not have a long lasting effect on your score. Having said that, if you are a serial offender, you can expect your credit score to take a big plunge. If you pay your bill late by more than 60 days, you can be sure that you are going to get reported, and the effects will last for quite some time.
Paying your bill is not an all or nothing cause
So you didn’t get a chance to pay your bill on time for this month. Should you buy as much time as you can before making the payment? Wrong! The more you wait the worse it gets for you and your score. You should pay your bill as soon as you humanly can. In my book, there is no excuse for not paying your bill on time. But unexpected things happen. But if you are late, that doesn’t mean you should not pay your bill anymore. The more you put off your credit card payments, the worse off you will be.
You should avoid late payments and fees at all costs, but if you can’t, that’s not the end of the world. Pay your bill as soon as possible and get on the right track before long.
