Any installment loans you have can help in a category often referred to as credit mix. The impact this category has on your credit score will vary based on the scoring model used. Credit mix measures your ability to maintain a consistent payment history with multiple types of credit accounts. For many young adults, student loans may be the only installment account they have on file. So when your student loan falls off your credit report, you may lose that credit mix diversity, which can temporarily lower your score.
But paying off the loan means saving the interest you are paying on the loan which may be more important than your credit score.
