by : Rachel Yoshida

When you owe payments that you have to pay on a regular basis, you know how worrisome it is to continuously wonder if you will be able to make the payment when it is due. We need to work diligently to schedule and spend our money wisely to be certain we will not be late on anything because it is all too easy to affect our credit rating with only one or two late payments.

Our credit score is vitally important when we need to get a loan from a bank, applying for credit cards, or acquiring a home or automobile from any other money lending company. The only way to be certain that we keep our credit history in tact is by making the payments we owe when they are due.

There are a lot of places that notify the credit bureaus today that did not always in the past. Even the businesses that handle our utilities many times report outstanding payments. This is something that you have to know from the start. You have to be positive which companies report late payments and which ones that will not.

In the majority of cases you will not be charged a late fee and the credit bureaus be notified until you have gone past a grace period date if you have one. A lot of people may not take advantage of the extra time allotted to them by the grace period. It is really fine to make use of this additional time as long as you do not go beyond it. Of course, it is normally great to pay any payments you owe to anyone on the exact date it falls due, but sometimes when there are situations that you can not help, you could not have an option.

It is handy to know that you may utilize your grace periods and it not hurt your credit history, but the wisest thing is to not get into the habit of using them except when it is a have to situation. Delay in paying things until the last minute might be a necessity occasionally, but this is when you risk a situation showing up during that time that will let you be late.

Protecting our credit is not that complex if our income cooperates too. The smartest way to avoid bad credit is to not overload our capabilities in the first place. This is what a lot of us come to see the hard way. The truth is when you do not have to borrow, just do not do it.