Some times things happen that cause you to be late on your payments. When that happens, it shows up on your credit report in certain ways.

If 30- or 60-day late payments don’t happen often, they shouldn’t cause lasting damage to your credit score unless they are recent (as in the last two years or so) or occur on a regular basis.

Once you are 90-days late payment, the credit scoring models consider you much more likely to do it again. One 90-day late payment will damage your credit for up to seven years. From a scoring perspective, a single 90-day late payment is as damaging to your credit scores as a bankruptcy filing, a tax lien, a collection, a judgment or repossession.