Being 30 Days Late & Your Credit Report

When you fail to make a loan or credit card payment within 30 days of the due date your lender can notify the credit reporting agencies. The national credit bureaus, Equifax, Experian and TransUnion, all list 30 day late payments on your credit report, and your credit score suffers every time a creditor reports a late payment.

Late Payments

Technically, you are making a late payment if you miss your payment due date by just one day, but most lenders provide you with a grace period that lasts for up to 10 days before your payments are regarded as late. You incur penalty fees from your creditor for making payments after the grace period ends, but from a credit reporting perspective, you are not "late" until you have fallen more than 30 days behind on your payments.

Credit File

The credit bureaus store information about your current borrowing habits in your credit report. Generally, closed accounts disappear from your report once the lender in question stops making monthly reports about your account activity. However, late payments and other negative events, such as foreclosure, stay on your credit report for seven years. Even thought you made your payment, the fact you were late making it means a late payment occurrence remains on your credit report.

Credit Score Factors

Credit bureaus use a variety of different pieces of information to calculate your credit score, but your payment history accounts for about a third of your overall score. However, if you have multiple accounts that you have paid on time then a single 30 day late payment may not have much of an impact on your credit report. The more good information you have on your report, the less damage a single negative event can do to your score. However, if you have not had credit for a long time or have very few open accounts, a single late payment can have a significant impact on your score.

Lenders

Lenders check your credit score whenever you apply for a new credit product, but the only credit events that normally immediately disqualify you from obtaining credit are events such as a recent bankruptcy. If your score has fallen due to a single late payment, lenders are often prepared to overlook that single negative event, especially if some kind of unusual sequence of events caused you to miss your payment. However, if you missed your payment because you are starting to have financial problems then lenders may view that missed payment as a sign of future problems and refuse to provide you with additional credit.