They aren't advertising it, but as the title says you can pay down student loans with a credit card. For me, this means my 8% interest is getting cut down due to 2% cash back. I did a test payment and there was no fee. Thought y'all would like to know.
Although this is extremely funny, plugging the numbers in for a $50,000 loan at 4% over 10 years shows that this only saves you $250. Still, that's $250 you have and the lender doesn't, and you made them cash a check every day.
EDIT:
Whoops, forgot you had to pay the same as if you made monthly payments. In that case it saves you $315 and 20 days. You save more, obviously, if you pay more than the minimum.
EDIT EDIT:
You'd want to pay 1/28th the monthly minimum every day to avoid having to send an extra check in February. At that schedule, you'll save $1193 and 305 days. That's pretty significant, and that's at 4% interest. A lot of student loans are higher than that.
Key difference though is that student loan interest compounds daily, not monthly like other loans. And lender will apply prepayment when it's recieved, not hold it in escrow until a complete payment is recieved. (This same trick doesn't work for a mortgage, that amoritizes monthly).
Lemme look up my old spreadsheets and I can give my own loan as an example and show my math.
But maybe it's different now or depends on the lender. My student loan was during the Bush era when private student loan lenders were a thing... Loan was serviced by a company called Great Lakes and it was a variable rate loan tied to LIBOR index. During Obama they changed it back to federal loans only, and I'm not sure if that would nullify this. Think it's still relevant though but I could be wrong.
Those were the assumptions I used in the calculator, but I had forgotten that you still had to meet the minimum monthly payment, so you're paying at an advanced schedule. If you're paying 1/28th each day so you don't have to send an extra check in February that puts you at an even more advanced schedule.