Everyone misses a payment at one point or another. Maybe the debit card on file expired, or the bill was sent to the wrong address. Whatever the reason, missed payments can mean serious hits to a credit score. According to Equifax, just one missed payment could cause as much as an 110-point drop to a person with a score of 780 that has never had a record of missed payments. That is pretty steep for a simple mistake.
Luckily, The Simple Dollar points out that missing a payment does not actually start to matter until after 29 days have passed. Why? There is simply no method to report an account that has not yet reached 30 days past due. This is why people often say that missing one payment will not hurt anything. In reality, it is the report of one missed payment that does the damage.
