Student loans do affect your credit score.
Student loans are reported as installment debt to the major credit bureaus which include TransUnion, Experian and Equifax.
Making consistent and on time payments to your student loans will boost your credit score overtime, and making late or missed payments to your student loan will negatively impact and lower your credit score.
Student loans also influence your credit mix, total debt and the average age of your accounts.
Federal student loans and private student loans can also be paid off early without prepayment or early pay off penalties.
Paying off your student loans early saves you money on interest and shortens the term of the student loan.
To pay off your student loan early and effectively, you should ensure that your extra student loan payments are applied directly to the principal balance of the student loan, instead of future payments.
Make extra payments to your student loans and pay more than the minimum monthly amount to your student loans, and specifically target the principal of the student loans.
You can also biweekly payments on the student loan, by making half payments on the student loan every 2 weeks, which results in you making 13 full payments on the student loan per year instead of just 12 payments on the student loan in the year.
Or use bonuses, tax refunds or unexpected cash to make large one time payments on the student loan to help pay the student loan off faster.
You can also consider refinancing your student loan to get a lower interest rate, which can also help pay off the student loan faster, although you may lose your federal benefits.
When paying off your student loan early, you should also explicitly instruct the student loan servicer to apply any extra payments to the principal and not future payments.
And while rare, some older private student loans may have prepayment penalties.
And you should also consider if you have high interest debt or lack an emergency fund before you aggressively pay off the lower interest student loans.
You can also get a payoff quote for your student loans by requesting a formal pay off quote from the student loan lender for the exact amount needed to pay off the student loan and close your account.