Your credit report is a timeline of good and bad decisions.

Your credit report is a document that plays great importance in your life. Your job, your home and your furnishings are all dependent upon what the report contains. While the entries are maintained by the credit bureaus based upon information provided by creditors with whom you do business, you do have quite a bit to say about what goes on the report. The most important thing you can do is to make sure that you do everything possible to keep the negative information off of it. That generally means paying your bills on time and not applying for every credit card offer that comes your way. Here is a short list of how long some items will stay on your credit history.

Bankruptcies - If you file for bankruptcy, this filing will stay on your record for a full ten years. This is a huge red flag for anyone who is even thinking about lending you money, so it’s wise to make a bankruptcy filing your absolute last resort if you are in financial trouble. That’s ten years of people reading your history and saying, “Hmmm.. She walked away from her bills without paying them.” That does not go a long way towards encouraging anyone to provide you with a car loan or a job.

Other judgements - Fail to pay your property taxes? This will show up on your report, too. More and more municipalities are reporting to the credit bureaus when people don’t pay, and it will cost you a seven year listing. That’s if you pay. If you don’t pay, it could last a lot longer.  In addition, any civil action will show up and stay there for a while, so you might wish to avoid court proceedings, if you can.

Late payments - Payments that are more than 30 days late can linger for more than seven years. While the 90 day late payments are the ones that do the most damage, the 30 day late payments can still put a significant hit on your credit score. Pay your bills on time. If you find yourself disputing a bill, pay it and try to get reimbursed later. It’s much better than trying to explain away a late payment later, which usually doesn’t work, anyway.

On the bright side, closed accounts that were in good standing will stay there virtually forever, always reminding potential lenders that you did something good. The ones that you closed with late payments will fall off the report after seven years or so. This is one of the few places where you can benefit from time. The good stuff can stick with you forever.

The bottom line here is that any financial mistakes that you make will haunt you for a long time. Nothing is trivial as far as the credit bureau is concerned, and they want to make sure that everyone knows it. On the other hand, if there are errors on your report, they will repair that. Be careful. Your financial mistake of today will still be hanging around to haunt you for nearly a decade.

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