I am trying to understand how exactly late payments affect the score. myFICO tells me that my score is negatively impacted by (1) the recency of a late payment, and (2) the number of accounts with late payments listed on them. Does this mean that the number (or fraction) of late payments is immaterial? I also see that the FICO simulator at
http://www.bankrate.com/calculators/credit-score-fico-calculator.aspx
doesn't care about the number of late payments, but only whether you have ever been late and, if so, at most how late.
I have one account with 9 late payments listed on them that the creditor agreed to reduce to 7 upon my dispute. I believe the correct number should be 0 or 1 (and I am still investigating which one it is). My question is: does it make sense for me to spend effort (quite likely in a small claims court) to reduce the number of late payments to 1 or does the number not matter? Fyi, I do have a second older account (with the same creditor) that also lists a couple late payments.
My current score is in the 740s (that I brought up from the 640s in part thanks to this site) and I would like to push it comfortably over 760.
AV
