<prompt> Human: So, quick question that may have been addressed here before but I couldnt seem to find it - Im ahead on my car loan. Like way ahead. Next payment not due until July. If I forgo the automatic transfers, will it show on my credit as a break in consecutive payments?The extra money Ive been paying has indeed gone to the principal, and my bank statement clearly shows that its not due for a few months - but as I understand it the due date is simply calculated from the payment slope to make it to 0 at the end of the loans term. Which brings me back to the question of how will it show on my credit if I skipped a month?Thanks!EDIT: Lots of good feedback, lots of insight - _thank you_. For some clarification, Im not in too tight of a bind or anything, but am curious about the mechanics in case I did find a need to appropriate that payment to something more immediate in the future. I didnt want to make a knee-jerk reaction if it came to it, and end up shooting myself in the foot in regards to my credit score!Assistant: Your loan company sucks. What some places do, is instead of making it go directly against the principal, they will advance your due date so that the interest builds back up. You need to make sure to talk to your lender and let them know that you would like to make extra payments that only go directly against the principal and DO NOT advance the due date. They do that to trick you and undo all of the hard work that youve been doing to pay the car off early.Human: Interesting. Perhaps Im mistaken then about the principal coming down.However, if the total amount due is still lowering while theyre pushing out the due date, whats the differenceharm as long as Im on a personally defined slope to reach 0 early?Assistant: So the idea of paying down a loan early is to pay less interest, right? What your bank is doing right now is saying Hey Crashastern, were here to help. Were going to advance your due date so you dont have to make any payments, cause were cool like that. What theyre really saying is they want you to pay the interest for the full length of the term 36, 48, 60 months instead of applying extra to just principle, effectively shortening the term and interest paid overall.Human: Hmm, that makes sense. Typical bank shit being crappy, but it makes sense.Answering questions I didnt know I had :P  <response>: While the bank would prefer you to not keep making those monthly payments and let the interest build up, its not like you have to stop paying. They are still allowing you to pay ahead and knock down the principal with your extra payments without charge. It isnt a crappy thing for the bank to do at all, in fact if you ran in to some rough financial patch in which it would really help to have that extra whatever a month, its actually quite nice of the bank to allow your additional payments to be used as monthly payments if you so choose. 