@Anonymous wrote:@calyx !! Where have you been? Great so see you back on here!
Hope you are taking care and can go back to work soon, safely. At least we have some relief from payments.
Are yours going to have interest?
Hi @Anonymous !
I've just been busy - I actually have been at work the entire time - I work operations in a hospital. I usually support researchers, but with the SAH/WFH going on, I end up supporting everyone - The clinicians who share the floor with my office have been super sweet - to no one's surprise, when the building breaks, they don't know who to call, but they know me 
Plus I still do inspections and oversight for some of the hospital operations, and legally that can't just stop for emergencies. At least I've had amazing parking spots (our hospital is opening back up for normal operations except those that CAN WFH starting Monday). Rolling in late and leaving early has been amazing.
I was a bit scarce because we were prepping (and then undergoing) an accreditation site visit the second week of March. Literally the day it ended I flew to Houston for a trip I had planned a year out, everything was cancelled and I flew home early. And I've just been hanging out doing my job since then.
I'll be furloughed later in June for a bit (hospitals are hit so hard financially), but not nearly as long as some others I know, so I'll be grateful for the forebearance then. My loans are all at 0% currently and will keep it til Sept like the others. I'm hoping a second act (HEROES or whatever they want to call it) will pass to extend that, but I don't think it's likely. I did get it paid down so that both of my loans (they report the single consolidated line to CRBs, but show two loan lines like it hasn't been consolidated when i log in) to less than 4 digits each, woot woot!
After everything, I am on standard payments - I went through the rigamarole of getting off of ICR so my payments wouldn't reset in September when my certification was originally due... so much for that!
Because of *waves above*, I'll just be transferring my usual overpayments to a HYSA and then do a "balloon" payment Oct 1... That should push the payment out and will just a day of interest.
I hope everything is well with you
So interesting to find this thread with the exact information I'm looking for! I also would like to extend my SLs to serve as my only installment loans. I just paid off my car loan and don't intend on starting another or getting a mortgage any time soon. I am just at the beginning of this as I graduated in December 2019 and my loans just moved out of grace into deferred because of CARES. I have been making $500 payments to get the loans and have paid off the interest that had accrued (they were federal unsubsidized loans) and started paying down the balance ($25k). How does this work? Should I be making more aggressive payments to drop down the percentage owed and then make smaller payments or just make consistent medium sized payments until its relatively small % owed and then make tiny payments for a long time? Should I wait to make payments until out of deferrment? How can I play these reindeer games, too?
AU: 
Thanks for the information! I have been making payments while in school because my loans are unsubsidized to keep the interest down - while interest rates have been at 0% recently, I paid off the interest and started paying the principal amounts (2 loans) so they would report as less than 100% owed (about 95%) when they show as open (whenever that will be...). Is the benefit of making large payments and pushing the date out just to make big reductions in the amount owed on the loan while not paying off the loan earlier? What are the thresholds for score increases? I have only read of penalties above 100% and below 9%. I am not going to be doing income-driven repayment, just a standard repayment plan but I had originally planned on just paying about 2.5x the payment required by my plan but it seems like that is not what I should do if I want to have a nicely aged installment account. I have the ability to be very aggressive with my payments but what is the strategy? Get to below 9% ASAP on the loans and just have a due date far away in the future?
Installment loans (particularly non-mortgage loans) don't have the breakpoints that revolvers do, and showing above 100% is a minimal hit (their existence will give you a bigger boost than you lose from having utilization greater than 100%, if they're your only installments).
So yeah, below 9% maximizes your boost, and it's all about getting the loan down to the minimal amount you are comfortable with (meaning, you're happy with the number and it's not generating too much interest), but ABOVE where the institution will "write off" your loan. Some banks/places will go ahead and write off a very small amount (usually under $1-200), so my goal is to keep my principle to ~$250. Small enough that the interest doesn't bother me, big enough for the loan to stay on the books.
Right now the APR on your loans is 0%, which is why I was thinking you'd just save it up and make a large payment in October, but I missed that you're still in school - so yeah, throw every dollar you have at it, while there's no interest to get the principle down as much as you can. Then when interest starts again, there will be less for it to work on. Since you're still in school, your 'next due date' isn't set yet, but I'm a firm believer in Finances > FICO, and honestly, the smaller the principle is when you get done with the loans, the better for everything.
But yes, I will be doing a large loan payment. My loans are ~320/month, so if I drop ~1500 on them when they're due, that will push my "next payment due" from November (because I will be making October's payment) to 3/2021 right there. If I pay 2-3x the amount due (still ~320, because it's not recalculate at any point), that means my next payment is pushed out 2-3months for every payment. It adds up. Student loans are 10y loans, so I can get the loan to ~250 and just ride it out (but throw a reminder on a calendar so I don't manage to put a $250 student loan into default, LOL)
Before the CARES act did the deferment thing, my next payment was due in 11/2022. Unfortunately deferment "reset" my due date to 10/2020, which was pretty annoying. Paying right now doesn't push it out (since nothing is due), so there's no point in paying (and with 0% interest, I'm not losing money).
FYI: My Student Loans have been brought <50% since I consolidated them in 2018, and I haven't seen a signficant change to my FICO that could be caused by the utilization drop. When I got a new installment loan (car loan) in 2019, I did not see a loss of FICO8 points, either, when I had a second loan at 100% and had raised my aggregate loan utilization.
So this:
"...what is the strategy? Get to below 9% ASAP on the loans and just have a due date far away in the future? " - is EXACTLY right
Thanks for the additional information! Just to clarify - I am not still in school, I graduated in December 2019 so was in grace until June and then went straight to deferred b/c of CARES. I just meant that while I was in school (and in the past 6 months since graduating) I have made payments to keep the interest down. I actually just got my letter from my loan servicer today that my first due date is in October so I will continue to pay down the principal until then.
Help me understand the strategy/purpose of having a due date far out in the distance.
Let's say my loan balance is $100,000 and my minimum monthly payments are $700. Interest is obviously at 0 now, but will be at 6.625% come October 1 (meaning that roughly $552.08 will accumulate per month in interest if I were to make payments every 30 days. So then let's say I wait and drop a full six month's worth of payments on October 1 ($700 x 6 = $4200). Great, my loan balance is now $95,800, and I'm technically "paid ahead" by six full months, but I'm also now accumulating interest at a rate of $17.38 per day (approximately $521 a month). So I'd be foolish not to continue to pay at least every 30 days, becuase skipping even just one payment will mean that the next time I make a payment, it ALL goes to interest.
So where's the advantage (meaning, what's the point) of pushing out the due date? I'm confused.
@jasonbourne84 wrote:Help me understand the strategy/purpose of having a due date far out in the distance.
Let's say my loan balance is $100,000 and my minimum monthly payments are $700. Interest is obviously at 0 now, but will be at 6.625% come October 1 (meaning that roughly $552.08 will accumulate per month in interest if I were to make payments every 30 days. So then let's say I wait and drop a full six month's worth of payments on October 1 ($700 x 6 = $4200). Great, my loan balance is now $95,800, and I'm technically "paid ahead" by six full months, but I'm also now accumulating interest at a rate of $17.38 per day (approximately $521 a month). So I'd be foolish not to continue to pay at least every 30 days, becuase skipping even just one payment will mean that the next time I make a payment, it ALL goes to interest.
So where's the advantage (meaning, what's the point) of pushing out the due date? I'm confused.
Wait. I think I get it. You're saying that the payoff comes much later... once you have the principal paid way down to something like a few hundred bucks, and then don't have a due date for several years in the future and can basically pay a few bucks in interest here there as payment for a FICO boost. Right? Cool.
@jasonbourne84 wrote:Wait. I think I get it. You're saying that the payoff comes much later... once you have the principal paid way down to something like a few hundred bucks, and then don't have a due date for several years in the future and can basically pay a few bucks in interest here there as payment for a FICO boost. Right? Cool.
@jasonbourne84 - That's it absolutely.
having an open installment loan on your file gives you a FICO boost. Having an open installment loan at less than 9% utilization (aggregate) gives you a bigger boost. You can imagine that it can be a pain to have one report that low for very long. If you dig around the forums, you'll see people using the "SSL Technique" for that boost. I am utterly disinterested in opening an account just for the boost. Technically, you can do this with any loan that lets you pay ahead (my autoloan, for instance), but my autoloan is only for another 48 months. Since Dept of Ed loans tend to be 10-20 years, if you can get it to 9%, that's a VERY long time to have that loan reporting at 9%. PLUS, the bonus of having a nice old tradeline to anchor your profile. win win win (IF you can pull it off )