Creative IOUs to Send Your Student Loan Lender
DIY ideas for when you don’t have actual money!
Are you out of useless graduate degrees to obtain, therefore rendering the option of in-school deferments non-existent to you? Do you somehow “make too much money” to qualify for economic hardship even though just yesterday you just collapsed into a veritable pool of tears after dropping a single, pathetic laundry quarter through a sewer grate? These creative IOUs might be for you!
Monopoly Money
This is fairly straightforward as far as IOUs go, but it’s a gesture of good faith and a reminder to yourself that you’ve been indoctrinated by Capitalism since you were a little girl in your Snow White jammies. Maybe if you opted to live off of the grid with seven male friends instead of spending 72k on a Political Science degree, things would have turned out differently and you wouldn’t now consider $1400 rent “a good deal.”
One DIY Diorama
All you’ll need is any malleable household material and a shoebox! While it’s been years since you’ve bought shoes, trust me, other people you know have bought shoes. Just ask around! When crafting your diorama, go ahead and portray yourself in the bathtub reading Rich Dad Poor Dad by candlelight. Use a fine-tipped, off-brand marker to illustrate that you are using your overdue electric bill as a bookmark. For added emphasis, portray yourself alone in the tub so that they know Joel recently left, leaving both your heart and checking account a little emptier. A few tiny morsels of blue chewing gum will adequately serve as tears.
Lightning Bugs in a Mason Jar
Remember when you were a kid and the carefree joy of running barefoot through earthy summer grass was enough to sustain your spirit for days on end? Revisit that feeling just long enough to capture a few lightning bugs in a thrift-store mason jar but not long enough to get used to it. Poke a couple of air holes because, while desperate, you are not a monster! Despite your tender care and very specific shipping instructions, they will arrive dead and have lost their light. This will evoke sympathy from your student loan lenders by reminding them that you had to choose between last month’s payment and your electric bill.
A Lock of Your Hair
With all the interest they’re collecting from your peers who went into “finance” and “law” and “medicine,” they can just pay someone to clone you. The clone version of you will grow up financially literate in her fancy lab room, and then she can pay them back! While you have the stiff, rusty kitchen scissors out, you might as well say farewell to your split ends. It couldn’t possibly turn out any worse than the time you gave yourself a bowl cut in the dim light of your bathroom at 2:00am after drinking too much NyQuil. How else were you supposed to numb the symptoms of your chronic sinus infection and the anxiety about the fact that you had a chronic sinus infection but not health insurance?
Sunflower Seeds
Sunflower seeds only cost 99 cents and can very easily pass as money seeds. Think about it: Can anyone scientifically prove that when planted with a lot of intention and a little luck, sunflower seeds don’t sprout a money tree? Well, your student loan lenders certainly can’t because they are most likely not scientists; this is why they will have to outsource the cloning. Joel was a scientist. Well, Joel is a scientist; he’s just not your scientist anymore. Maybe Joel collected the hair clippings off the bathroom floor last March and has already cloned you in the hopes that your clone is like you only less sad and poor.
A Bag of Dust
There’s nothing more compelling to the powers that be than a reminder that we all came from dust and will all return to dust in a mere matter of years, months, weeks, days, hell, maybe even minu —
Shhhhhh. Faking your own death is the final and most effective IOU, outside of actually dying. If you can find me, you can thank me later (and preferably in cash).
Justine Hipsky is a writer, improviser, and storyteller living in Washington, DC. When she’s not at home ordering takeout and harassing her dog with forehead kisses, she can be found on stage at Washington Improv Theater with the badass womxn of Hellcat. Follow her on Medium, Twitter, and Instagram.
