How long do late credit card payments impact your credit report?
I checked my wife’s credit report and she has 3 accounts with late payments from several years ago prior to us being married. One was past due 60 days, one was past due 30 days a few times, and one was past due 120 days. How long will her credit rating be impacted by these accounts? Is it 7 years from the time the account is closed?
Card, Credit, impact, late, long, Payments, Report
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You can use credit repair agency to fix it – for example this one – http://freecreditreport.sinfree.net – They can clean lots of such bad stuff from your credit report – and do it much faster than yourself, so your credit will go up fast.
1. Order your credit reports from the 3 bureaus
http://www.equifax.com
http://www.experian.com
http://www.transunion.com
If you’re ordering for the first time, get your score (for a fee) from Equifax as their scoring matters most.
2. Make copies of your report and put the originals in a binder. On the photocopied reports use a highlighter and check for any incorrect, outdate, false, etc…info
3. Download a dispute letter(s) from the credit bureaus website and list anything that is wrong. Mail them to their office(s). They have 30 days to reply.
4. If they will not remove something that is not yours or too old (> 7 years) as them for a debt validation. This may take an additional 30 days.
5. Once the ‘baddies’ come off, take care not to let any of your other accounts fall into that predicament.
6. If you haven’t already make sure your existing accounts are current and paid on time ALWAYS.
7. Get a secured credit card with http://www.capitalone.com or http://www.mastercard.com for like $500-1000 or more if you can and use it sparingly. Charge like $50 on the card each month and pay it in FULL and on TIME. Make sure you do this for a minimum of 6 months so that you estabish a positive repayment history.
8. Problem with just letting them ‘fall off’ is that they may never. You may get sued before that…that’s where you suddenly get a summons to appear in court and a judgment for collection against you.
For the 2 collection items…pay them but get a ‘pay for delete’ from the collectin agency in WRITING…they’ll delete it after you pay and it will help your credit score