7 Ways to Wreck Your Credit – Making Late Payments or Skipping them EntirelyPosted on October 17, 2009

Obviously making late payments or missing payments altogether is going to wreck your credit score. Fortunately, not all missed and late payments are counted equally.

The FICO score weighs missed and late payments by several criteria, including recentness, how late a payment was and the frequency of missed or late payments. Recentness has the most bearing on the FICO score. For instance, a 2-year-old incident of a payment being 90 days late is not as bad as a recent 30 days late payment.

Credit scores are a predictor of future risk, so all of the factors are looked at are viewed as to how well they can predict the future. The more recent the information is, the more predictive it is. Lenders are always looking to spot potential problems as early as possible.