<prompt> Human: Hi! I just finished law school and currently have 216k in student loans.Ive probably spent 60 too many hours roaming through rpersonalfinance, rstudentloans and rchurning this week and have formulated a plan to pay off my student loans. Would love feedbackwhats good, bad, or totally off? Thanks everyone in this sub for getting me to this point because I was completely overwhelmed and had no idea what forbearance, capitalization, fixed, variable, etc. meant a week ago.Loan Interest Type---------8,000 5 Fed Perkins25,100 7.21 Grad Plus11,731 6.41 Grad Plus42,707 7.9 Grad Plus24,156 6.84 Grad Plus10,250 5.41 Stafford20,500 6.8 Stafford20,500 5.84 Stafford20,500 6.21 StaffordRelevant background info to assess my strategy:- Base salary is 204k, housing allowance 48k, and annual bonus 15k- Base and bonus rise about 10k each year- Will be living very frugally, and my main living expenses will be food, utilities, and transportation- The Fed Perkins loan is in the grace period until 32017, meaning as long as I pay it fully before 32017, I just pay the 8000 and no interest- For all the other loans, the grace periodforbearance period I have a mix ends in about a week, at which point all the interest accrued will be added to the principal.- Average interest rate: 6.79Proposed Strategy Separated so you can just comment on one, or all! Seriously, any expertise appreciated 1. The Federal Perkins loanSince I have until March of next year to pay this before any interest is added, and because in the grand scheme of my loans 8000 isnt much, Im going to keep the Federal Perkins loan separate from all the other soon-to-be refinanced loans. Ill pay it off sometime before March using my Discover card to get points then pay the card off immediately. Unfortunately they dont accept visa, otherwise Id definitely use my CSR.2. Paying off some interest before capitalization using CSRI only have about a week before the graceforbearance period for all the rest of the loans ends. Any interest that I dont pay by off by November 17 will be added to the principal. I have about 4000 that I can afford to pay right now. The plan is to put all of it towards the interest on the Grad Plus loan with 7.9 interest rate using my Chase Sapphire Reserve card. Tip I learned: MyGreatLakes accepts credit card payments as long as you call over the phone. For the CSR lovers, youll know this means Ill have hit the magic 4000 and get my bonus! Again, will pay off card immediately.3. Refinancing remaining 208k loansDidnt know what refinancing meant a week ago, so thanks reddit for enlightening me. I have applications in for Earnest, Sofi and Common Bond. Im going to wait to see what their final rates are for me, then pick the best offer. Some people seem to have had success playing the companies against each other to get lower rates ie screenshotting and sending your lower Earnest rate to Sofi to get a counter, so Ill try this as well. Ive already weeded out DRB and Citizens Bank because the rates they quoted me were absurdly high compared to the others. For perspective: Common Bond quoted 2.78 for variable 7 year loan and Earnest quoted 3.99 for fixed 5 year, 3.04 for variable 5 year. Of course these are just quotes based on the information I provided, but I expect the actual offer wont vary much.Regardless, since my current average interest is 6.79 and any of the options would bring me down around 3 points refinancing seems like a no-brainer. But correct me if Im wrong.4. Selecting the variable ratePutting this separately from 3 since I think some people might have differing thoughts on the fixed vs. variable strategy and am curious to hear. I think Im going to do the variable over fixed. Just going off SoFis quote:- Fixed 3.990 interest rate, 7 year term, 3,011 monthly payment- Variable 3.165 interest rate, 7 year term, 2,879 monthly paymentI realize that variable is more risky. But given my 4 year 3 if ambitious timeline, I dont think LIBOR although slightly increasing will rise enough to justify picking the fixed over variable. Also, the variable rate on Sofi is capped at 8.95, which is a nice protection mechanism. Lastly, my job is stable so I feel comfortable taking on the riskso to me, its worth the risk. But very interested in your thoughts. Im picking a 7 year term over a 5 year term because even though slightly higher interest rate, I like the comfort and flexibility of having a lower monthly payment.5. Savings and BudgetIve created an excel sheet to keep a fairly strict budget until I pay off my loans. Anything that isnt going towards retirement or allocated budget will go towards my loans, which means Ill ideally be overpaying the minimum every single month.I dont think it makes sense to have an emergency fund of 3-6 months salary as they recommend while I still have these loans. Instead, Im going to have a 2000 emergency fund. I figure that if something bad happens, 2000 is just enough to move out, fly home and live with my parents. Thoughts?NoteI realize this was extremely long, so thank you for reading if youve made it this far. Looking forward to your thoughts.  <response>: Pay them off as soon as you have 6 months in savings. You make effective 250k a year. Can be paid off in 1 year. That will save you more than worrying about variable rates over a longer period. 