Me and my fiance are two months behind on 2 different credit cards. After next Tuesday we will have paid both months off. We have never been late before in the past two years and we have paid a pretty good amount off on these cards. How bad is this going to affect our credit?

Depends..are these two items the only items reporting to your credit? If so, it will take a while to bring you score back up, if these are two out of say 8 or so, you should have enough other good credit to help offset this little hiccup. But in general, after about 12 months you should be ok. The question I have for you is, are you getting them paid up to date or are you paying them off to a zero balance? If you are getting them up-to-date you need to see if you can the balances below 50% of your credit limits. If you are paying them off, great. I would keep the cards open and just use them about once a month or so and pay it off each month so you can start to show that you made a mistake but have taken the necessary steps to avoid doing that again. You need to worry more about your whole credit picture as well.

How badly late credit card payments will affect your FICO really depends on what your credit score is in the first place. A FICO score of 780 will drop further from late payments than will a FICO of 520. Why? I have no clue.

Fair Issacs, the company that put together the formula that calculates your FICO is so secretive about the formula that they had it patented. That's why you don't get your FICO when you order a free credit report.

In closing a couple of credit card lates isn't the end of the world. Don't loose any sleep over it.

If you want to find out more about how your credit score works and what affects it, visit http://www.myfico.com

Want to get a free copy of your credit report? Visit http://www.annualcreditreport.com