Student Loan Repayment Strategy for Credit Score

[TheCity]

Hey myFICO,

I'm struggling to come up with the best strategy for paying off my student loans.

So I have about 40k in student loans with Navient spead across 10 loans. All 10 have varying balances and interest rates. Both the highest balance and loan and lowest balance loan share the highest interest rate of 6.550%.

With that knowledge, I have a few questions:

• Should I be paying more than the minimum payment currently? Right now it is very low, and I'm very aware that with the interest, I'll be paying much much more in the long run. My priority right now though is getting my credit score back up. I also am aware that with each month, that is 10 on-time payments reporting to my credit from these alone. Right now, poor payment history is my biggest detractor of my credit score (From these same loans, ironically)
• If I should be paying more than the minimum payment, which loan should I begin with? The highest balance or the lowest balance?
  • I actually am in a position to pay off the lowest balance loan completely within the month if I choose, but is that the right move? Should I pay it down to maybe a few hundred dollars and then resume paying the minumum, allowing it continue to report on-time payments to my credit? Or should I focus on knocking down the loan(s) with higher balances?
  • Would paying off that lower balance completely have a negative affect on my credit score?

Any help is welcome.

Thanks!

[Anonymous]

Hello,
Are these Federal loans? Sub or unsubsidized? How long have u been paying off the loans? What plan are you currently on?
Without knowing the details, if you are on track to pay off the entire loan balances eventually, I would pay the minimum, and make a larger payment to the biggest loan(s) with the highest interest rate. If you use the repayment calculator on the Dept of Education site, pick an amount that you could pay extra towards it and see how much money you will save by early repayment. If you're trying to offset the lates, maybe it would be best to especially only make the minimum payment on the small balance loans so you can keep them reporting payments.
If you're in a loan forgiveness program, it's possible that part of your loan will just be forgiven. In this case, it might not matter how much interest you accrue.
Overall, if you just stick with making the payments on time your score will improve steadily and the lates will fall off eventually.

[RobertEG]

Are they federal student loans, and if so, what type?

Certain federal student loans have explicit provisions under the Higher Education Act that exempt the normal exclusion of derogs reported on the loan until the loan has been paid in full.  If you have a federal student loan with many derogs, they paying the loan will remove the derogs if they are more than 7 years since date of first delinquency.