When exactly does your past due account get reported to a credit reporting agency? As soon as you fall 30 days past due your credit accounts are reflected as past due. Everyone is not clear when you are past due 30 days. Let's say you have an account that is due May 1, 2009 and you miss this payment for whatever reason. At this point in time your account is not reported to the credit reporting agency as past due. Now if June 1, 2009 comes and goes and you still have not paid your account it will be reported to the credit bureau because you are now 30 days past due.
Information regarding your credit accounts are reported to the credit bureau during the first week of every month. With the above example you account would be reported as a 30 day delinquent account on July 1, 2009. If you catch this account up to date before July 1, 2009 it will still be reported as 30 days delinquent for that time frame. When August 1, 2009 rolls around your account status, whatever it might be at that point in time, will be reported once again.
How serious is a 30 day delinquency? Of course you don't want any of your accounts to fall past due, unfortunately it does happen. The good news is a 30 day delinquency is not that serious of a delinquency especially if you bring the account current in a reasonable time frame. Now if you are applying for a mortgage and you have 30 day delinquencies it could cause you to receive a higher rate of interest, which equates to more money out of your pocket in terms of finance charges over the life of the mortgage. You may have some explaining to do as well. A loan officer will probably want to know why you were past due. This could impact your ability to get a mortgage loan depending on what the rest of your credit report looks like.
Now even though your credit accounts are not reported to the credit bureau until they are 30 days past due there is a very good chance that you will receive a late charge on that account, which could be as much as $29 or $39, depending on the company and their policies. The late charge could be much more with your mortgage.


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