I have to disagree here with Scorp. I know he's comming at it with a tax point of view, but sometimes good tax advice is bad financial advice. Frasbee, you can claim the student loan interest deduction on your taxes and you can build up your credit, but at the end of the day the money is still going out of your pocket. If you have the money to pay it off, you should just pay it all off. Whenever you want to build up your credit score, just get a personal loan and make payments on it or keep a credit card handy with some balance on it at the end of the month. Unless you need your credit score to be good for the moment, you should just pay off what you own instead.