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I am one of the "lucky" many that have a literal ton of student loan debt. I took out about $55k and currently owe $91k. I've never defaulted or even had a late payment, I just spent most of my 20s completely broke and, therefore, unable to escape a cycle of deferment/forebearance/$0 Income-based payment rinse/repeat all while watching the interest add and compound until I owe nearly twice what I borrowed. I pay $400 a month now but that is less than the interest that acrues and my payment plan has Uncle Sam only paying half the unpaid interest each month so my balance keeps going up and will continue to do so for another 9 (if PSLF doesn't completely collapse) or 20-odd years.
I've tried finding information on this but I'm wondering what (if any) impact having a utilization roughly of roughly 165% (and growing!) in this area might be doing to my scores. The only other installment loan I have open is my car and I am just about to pay that off. My credit card utilization is very low - usually at 1-3% reporting on a single card each month.
On time student loans are basically neutral in my experiences.
My wife has higher balances than you and scores over 800.
DON'T WORK FOR CREDIT CARDS ... MAKE CREDIT CARDS WORK FOR YOU!
^ What was previously said.
You aren't taking a ding on student loans having an overage of 100% so much as you're not getting the 20-30pts you could get from having a loan under 9%.
IF the student loan is your only installment account, it's actually helping you more than it is hurting you because having an installment present is a huge help.
And I don't know if it's worth anything, but I track as much FICO information as I can, and going from >100%utilization to <70% doesn't seem to have helped my FICO at all, so far. I did get a huge jump at the beginning because I had no installments. Also, don't forget that installment accounts are only considered in aggregate (unlike revolvers), so although my UTI is at ~65% on my SL, my aggregate is ~78%, and that's the number people generally agree upon that matters (aggregate, not the 78%...). Mortgages may be treated differently, but overall, the SL is probably more good than bad (clear as mud?)