Student loan partial repayment with credit card strategy

[AK]

In another thread, someone mentioned that student loans can be paid with a credit card for additional, one-time payments over the phone through their loan service provider. That got me thinking about travel hacking and another potential monthly spend avenue for credit card churning. What do you think of the following? Is anyone doing this already? Admittedly, I'm just a beginner at travel hacking so there's probably a better strategy but this seems fairly easy without much effort.

1) Lower my monthly required student payment to the minimum by changing the repayment plan. Pay the new required monthly payment with automatic payments and then pay the difference of what the original monthly payment was with a rewards credit card applied towards principal. Pay off credit card monthly.

If it helps, I have about 60K remaining in loans through Great Lakes at 6.8% (6.55% with automatic payments). My monthly payment is about 900 on the 10 year standard plan with 7 years remaining. I haven't run the numbers yet but wanted to get initial thoughts on this.

[Lis]

Check the fine print with your loan provider, but many charge additional fees if you pay via credit card. Mine will charge a flat fee of $14.95 for a credit card payment, but I've also seen 2.5-3.5% of the payment. Card churning with student loans is probably not a good idea.

However, you could look into transferring the balance onto a 0% credit card and paying off the balance without interest. Given your total is around 60k, you might have to transfer multiple times. Run the numbers though, you still might save in the long run compared to paying 6.55% interest. I personally made a topic on it a few months ago. Maybe that could help you!