Depends on the point of view. If your biggest risk is you spending that loan money on gambling, then yes paying the debt early would help you get in less trouble.
From an economic point of view, if you don’t need that money at the moment, you should invest it, so that you can make a few bucks. If you get 1-2% more on every transaction that way, it really does stack up at the end, since this will make you exponentially more money.
You could try EndeavourOS, it’s based off Arch, so 99% of the Arch wiki can be directly applied to your system, and the installation process is much more normal with a GUI and a selection of Desktop Environment to choose from.
The hardest part with Arch is getting the initial setup working imo, so you can put a few more hours trying to install it (if you’re ready to bear the frustration that might come with it) or pick a distro like EndeavourOS with a GUI installer to get a working system quicker.