Paying Your Bills on Time and Still Getting Nowhere

A major part of the reason that your financial situation is not worse than it is gratitude. You are grateful to be employed and to have gigs available, so you work tirelessly at them. You are grateful to be married and to live within walking distance from the supermarket, so you and your spouse have one car instead of two; you walk to the supermarket for minor shopping trips while your spouse is at work, and for major shopping, your spouse drops you off at work and then heads to the supermarket. You do not wish for the things that advertisers tell you to spend money on, so you read library books, sit through ads on YouTube, and fill your time with work and leisurely walking instead of consuming subscription content. Financial emergencies can happen to anyone, even people who live within their means. With your modest lifestyle, you manage to stay afloat; you have not paid a bill late in many years. How will you borrow money if you need to travel for a family emergency or pay a medical bill to avoid incurring a major debt? This is easy for people with high credit scores, and yours should be high, considering how diligently you pay your bills. Unfortunately, credit reporting does not work that way, so plenty of hardworking, financially responsible people are stuck with mediocre credit scores that do not seem to increase. For help getting your credit score unstuck, contact a Philadelphia debt relief lawyer.

In the World of Credit Reporting, No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

Your credit score can change every month, depending on how much you pay down your outstanding debts and how much new debt, if any, you incurred during the pay period. If you pay a bill late, regardless of what that bill is, the creditors immediately report it to the credit reporting bureaus, and this negatively affects your credit score. A single late payment can lower your credit score by up to 50 points.

In a perfect world, your credit score would increase every time you met a financial obligation, every time you paid a bill. Unfortunately, this part of credit reporting is a system where the rich get richer. It helps your credit score every time you make a payment toward a credit card or an installment loan such as a car loan or home mortgage, but the only trouble is that this can only happen if you qualify for these expensive financial products. The rest of us, who make payments every month on our rent, utilities, and buy now pay later (BNPL) obligations, get no such boost to our credit score. The best antidote to this is to subscribe to a rent reporting app that will notify the credit reporting bureaus every time you make a payment on your rent.

Contact CONSUMERLAWPA.com About Getting Your Credit Score Unstuck

A Philadelphia consumer law attorney can help if you are stuck with an unimpressive credit score despite always paying your bills on time.  Contact CONSUMERLAWPA.com to set up a free, confidential consultation.

Source:

cnbc.com/2025/06/04/why-on-time-debt-payments-may-not-boost-your-credit-score.html