Never miss a payment

Before I got into credit, I never realized the impact of a late payment beyond the late fee associated with it. I always thought to myself, "eh, it's only a (say) $25 fee, whatever" when the impact can be much worse and long-lasting. Remember that if you're ever 30 days late on making a payment your lender can report that account as being 30 days late. Once that information lands on your credit report, it can dramatically drop your Fico scores and that information will typically remain there for around 7 years. Your other lenders will then see the negative information reported on that account and may take AA (adverse action) against you with their account(s). This happened to me before I got into credit and knew how things worked. One of my accounts that I didn't really care about (joint account, someone else was making the payments and stopped) was reported late. My credit union with which I was a member for nearly 20 years almost immediately cancelled my [only] credit card. I was never late in all those years on that account, kept my utilization in a respectable place and so on. When I called them up they referenced the negative information introduced to my credit report outside of my account with them as the reason for the AA. Hard lesson learned. The bottom line is that the most important thing anyone can do when it comes to credit is always be on time / never miss a payment!