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We often take paying bills for granted. We routinely do it and not think much about it. We sometimes are not even concerned if we pay bills late. But there are some potential major benefits of paying your bills on time. Here are a few of the important ones:

Improved Credit Score (or FICO)
Simply stated, every time you apply for a loan, mortgage or maybe even insurance, the institution to which you are applying will check your credit rating and credit score.

The credit score (or FICO) is just as important as your credit rating. This FICO is a score which can range from 300 to 800 (or more, depending upon who you believe.) The higher your score, the better the rates you will get.

The score is based upon a number of things in your credit history, like the amount of money you owe, types of credit you have and how well your bills are paid on time. In fact, your payment history could possibly account for 35% of your score.

So, paying bills on time helps your FICO, which will in turn help get lower rates on mortgages, loans and sometimes even auto insurance.

Improves Chances of Owning a Home
As already mentioned, your FICO score plays a big part in determining credit worthiness on mortgages, but more mortgage lenders are looking closely at you bill paying history, and, in some cases ranking the importance of your bill paying history higher than your FICO score in the mortgage approval process.

As with many things, there are always exceptions to the rules, but mortgage lenders are being more thorough, and sometimes stricter, in their approval process. So if you don’t own a home yet, and desire to, keep those rent, car or other loan payments paid on time.

Maintain Low Interest Rates on Credit Cards
Everyday we get bombarded with new credit card offers for transferring the balance from a higher interest rate credit card to a lower one. Many of these offers give fantastically low interest rates but you need to be aware of the fine print. Some contracts state that if you miss, or are late with, one payment, your ‘introductory rate’, which may be 1.9% or 2.9% or 4.9% may jump to almost 20% or 24%.

While the fine print of the contract gives the credit card company some leeway in when they will raise your interest rate, whether it be after one or two late payments, you can rest assured that it will go up if you have a couple of late payments.

Eliminate Late Fees and Finance Charges on Credit Cards
We have all missed a credit card payment or two in our lifetime and have paid ‘through the nose’ for it. It seems like the going rate for late fees is $29. On some credit cards, depending on your balance, a late fee could go as high as $35. As time goes on, these fees keep climbing.

Maintain Lower Auto Insurance Rates
Believe it or not, more and more auto insurers are linking late bill payments with auto insurance rates. They claim to have found a correlation between those with poor credit (late bill payments) and auto claims.

So even though you may be a good driver, without any accidents or claims, a few late payments on your bills will affect your credit report which will in turn effect your auto rates.

Keep Your Services and Products
More providers of various services, like Internet, are providing ample warnings that the service will be shut off if payments are late. The same applies for products that you lease or have on lay-away. While the loss of any of these are not life threatening, it can be a hassle to deal with, perhaps embarrassing, and costly to get the service or product re-instated.

Keep Your Car Starting
You may say, “What, keep your car starting??” Yes, while the popularity is still catching on, some used and new car dealers are now installing a small device under the dashboard. It will signal you when a car payment is due and if you don’t make a habit of making your car payments on time, this little device will prevent your car from starting. In such cases, you need to make a phone call to get the security code to start it.

Enjoy Peace of Mind
By routinely paying your bills paid on time, you have the peace of mind knowing that your bills are in order and that you won’t get socked with unexpected late fees or service charges. This is as they say on the TV commercials, “priceless”.

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