Six items to review on your credit report, Part 1: Late Payments

You've pulled one of your credit reports. Now what?

As you've probably heard by now, you entitled to free copies of your credit reports. Federal law gives you the right to request your three credit reports, one from each of the three major credit reporting agencies, every year through CreditCheckTotalcom.

You can get them all at once or throughout the year. Personal finance gurus often recommend pulling one report every four months so you're regularly tracking your records. Either way, checking your credit report is a smart move when you consider that information from your credit report determines your credit score.

But once you get that report, what do you do with it?

How about giving it the six-minute treatment? While you definitely want to read the full report in detail, a quick check on a handful of indicators can give you an instant appraisal of how good - or bad - your credit is right now.

1. Late Payments.

"Delinquencies are huge influences on the credit score," says Stephen Brobeck, executive director of the Consumer Federation of America. In fact, they make up 35% of your FICO score.

"If you see notations that bills have been paid 30, 60, 90 or 120 days late, that's very damaging to your credit," he says.

The other factor that's important here - the timeline. How late was the payment, and how long ago did you make this mistake?

"The later the payment, the more it hurts your credit," says Evan Hendricks, author of "Credit Scores & Credit Reports: How the System Really Works, What You Can Do."

"But the more time that has passed since you made a late payment, the less it will affect your credit," he says.

Coming up in Part 2: High Debt-to-Credit Limit Ratios.