Skipping a mortgage payment every once in a while can be tempting. After all, your house won’t get repossessed if you just miss one, right? Well…while technically you won’t go into foreclosure after one missed payment, if you delve into the regular habit of skipping mortgage payments, you’re likely to end up in quite a mess. Read: What Happens When You Skip a Payment? While you won’t lose your home, you will earn yourself major dips in your credit score. This means it will be very hard for you to get new lines of credit when you need them. It will also make it harder for you to cosign on your kids’ apartments (usually required when they are younger). So, what exactly happens when you skip a mortgage payment?

Let’s have a look:

• When you skip a mortgage payment, you don’t actually skip a mortgage payment. This is because even though you aren’t paying it right now, you’ll still be paying it later. Except you’re tacking late fees and finance charges onto yourself which can equal hundreds of dollars.
• Even though you only miss one payment, you’ll be kicking yourself for later on down the road. You’ll accumulate interest, which can add up to a substantial amount of money.
• Your credit score is going to drastically go down. This is going to destroy the health of your credit score and history. You won’t be able to buy a new car, or a new house. And if you do get approved, you’ll likely have a higher interest rate and APR due to your low credit score.

It could potentially also hurt you in terms of getting your loan modified later on. While many lenders tell you that it won’t affect it, its very possible that it could. If you are falling behind on payments, you need to contact your lender right away. While skipping a mortgage payment doesn’t seem like a big deal to you right now, it will very much so hurt you in the long run. For further reading, see: Don’t “Skip” a Mortgage Payment When You Refinance.