My fiance is currently in school for massage therapy and will be done either the end of august or september and he plans on getting a job on a cruise ship which would hopefully be January at the latest. But with the cruise job, he wouldn't have to pay rent or anything since he'd be living on the ship and at my place when he's home and getting tips so mostly likely he'd be able to pay off most, if not all of his loans, appr. 6k, before repayment is scheduled. I know this would save him in interest, I'm just wondering if it would affect his credit negatively.

good question. BUMP

bumping unanswered good question

No, it shouldn't hurt his credit. Installment loans (like SLs and auto loans) have much less of an effect on your credit than do revolving loans (like credit cards). Also, like you said, it will save him a lot of money in interest.

If he doesn't have a lot of other TLs, then, yes, having this on there may help his score a bit (although, again, paying it off quickly won't HURT). But, at the end of the day, like someone in the Credit Forum says "you can't eat FICO scores." If he's got the money to pay it off, and he's not going to go without anything else, including having something in savings just in case, in order to pay it (which doesn't sound like is the case at all), then it would probably behoove him to pay it off.

Hope this helps!! Good luck!!