Parents paying student loans

As a reward for being a good student and obtaining a sizable scholarship, my parents decided to pay for the rest of my education. The student loan is in my name and therefore shows up on my credit report. Recently, I was turned down for a personal loan due to "delinquint accounts" in my credit history. This was a huge surprise to me so I looked up my credit report. It turend out that my student loans were 4 months behind. I contacted my parents right away, and it ended up being an error on their part. They were still making monthly payments which were coming out of their bank account automatically, but for the wrong amount - much lower than it should have been. I paid the outstanding amount immediately and sent my parents the correct information, which they have since corrected on their end. HOWEVER, obviously, this still shows up as a delinquint account on my credit report and I assume this will negatively affect me for the next 7 years? Is there anything at all I can do to lessen the injury this caused to my credit? I'm planning a wedding right now and hope to be buying my first home within 2 years. I'm very worried about this. Help!!

Unless you can convince the lender to remove the late payments, they will remain for 7 years. And the damage from these late payments is going to depend on how late they were reported. A 30-day late is no where near as damaging as a 90+ day late. The good news is that the older these late payments get, the less impact they'll have.

The only thing you can do to help offset the damage is to manage your credit impeccably from here on. That means paying your payments on time, keeping your balances on your credit cards very low (10% or less is ideal) and to avoid applying for credit unless you absolutely need it. If you're planning on buying a house in 2 years and you stick to these principles, your scores will have no choice but to recover.

To really understand how late payments are calculated in a credit score, an excellent article to read is: Late Payment Secrets Revealed