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My CU (Affinity Plus) doesn't penalize me for paying early or paying extra on my $2,000 loan that I got to help build my "types of credit" points. So it makes the most sense for me to pay $1k or more and just pay less time, so I have less interest to pay, right? Am I missing something here, or is this a "duh"? I plan on paying a couple of years or so (or until I get another installment loan to replace it, like a car, which might be as soon as 6 months) so I can build my history, but I just want to be sure I'm not penalizing myself some other way here.
Make sure your loan actually begins to report and stays reporting for a while. I don't know how long it will take your CU to begin reporting, but it might not start right away. You want to have at least 12 months of payment history IMO because what the lenders are looking for is consistency too.