1. Call your lenders
Under the CARES Act protections, the only ways to protect your credit is to continue to make on-time payments or apply for coronavirus assistance programs before you’re in trouble. It’s not automatically applied to your accounts.

Consumers are going to have to pick up the phone and call their servicer to get relief. You’ll need to call every single lender that you’re not going to be able to pay and request relief separately. Each individual account will need to be put on notice.

2. Ask for a natural disaster code to be added to your credit report
There’s a special comment code, natural disaster code (AW), that lenders and credit bureaus can add to a credit report when there’s been a hurricane or other extreme weather event. After Hurricane Harvey hit Texas and Louisiana in 2017, about 40% of consumers had this code applied to their credit report.

While it’s existed for decades, the code could be applied to events beyond just natural disasters, including the current coronavirus pandemic. When that code is added to an account, it actually adds a sentence to your account that reads ‘affected by declared or natural disaster.

It’s not something consumers can add themselves, so you’ll need to call your lender or the credit bureaus, Equifax, Experian and Transunion. Adding natural disaster code (AW) will not affect your FICO credit score. It’s purely cosmetic, it doesn’t protect the score, but the code does protect your VantageScore (another type credit score generated by the credit bureaus) from any delinquent reporting being added to that account.

It’s not what I would call a safety net underneath a trapeze artist, but every little bit helps. For most consumers, it makes the most sense to contact your lenders and request that the natural disaster code (AW) be added when you’re calling to ask about a forbearance or payment plan, rather than making extra calls to the credit bureaus just about adding the code. Kill two birds with one stone.

3. Don’t stress if you’re a few days behind
When it comes to late payments, there’s a bit of credit protection already built in for consumers. Lenders can’t report a missed payment until 30 days after the payment is due. There’s no way to report someone as being late by one to 29 days, it doesn’t exist.

But if you don’t contact your lender and set up some kind of agreement and you miss your payment by more than 30 days, your credit score will likely take a hit. How much will vary from not very much to pretty catastrophic. It will depend on the quality of your credit before that late payment hits.

If you have bad credit and you start missing payments, it may not have that much of an impact. You can only beat a dead horse so much — there’s not really not much more damage you can do to yourself. But if you have a really good credit score, above 780, adding a late payment to your credit report is going to be a bigger deal.

4. Keep an eye on how much credit you’re using
Continuing to make minimum payments on your loans and credit cards is going to protect your credit. But that alone may not be enough.

You also need to watch your balances. When many Americans were out of work in 2008 and 2009, they started living off their credit cards to make it through until they were able to find a job. But putting a big balance on your credit card can drive your credit score down.

That’s because you’re using more of your available credit, which is a big factor in calculating credit risk and credit scores. When you use more than 30% of your available credit, your credit score is typically going to be lower because it signals to credit card companies that there’s a greater risk you may not pay it all off or that it may take a while to do so.

Even if consumers are able to make those minimum payments on time, the fact that they’re running up credit card debt, that’s another reason why their scores are going to go down. If you have any emergency savings, use that to pay bills and purchase essentials if your credit card balances are getting high.