The cover image on my personal Facebook page is currently a picture of my first car. I’m pretty sure I paid $1500 for it which was a hefty sum for me back in the fall of 1996. That car needed a little bit of brake work to pass the state’s safety inspection and then needed about a dozen other little repairs over the next two years. Fortunately, I had someone in my life who taught me a lot about working on cars and saved me lots of money in the process. I made the same mistake that many young people make in believing that saving money to purchase the car was all that I needed. That’s why I got excited when I saw an email from EconEdLink that featured their free lesson plan titled Owning a Car.

Owning a Car is a free lesson plan from EconEdLink that is designed as a personal finance lesson for high school students. The lesson is based around a video titled What are the True Costs of Car Ownership? The video was produced as a collaboration between Bank of America and Khan Academy. The lesson plan has students first estimate what they think the costs of car ownership are then watch the video while taking notes (template provided) about the actual costs of car ownership. The follow-up activity has students comparing ownership costs for a variety of vehicle types.

To build upon EconEdLink’s Owning a Car lesson plan consider showing your students Common Craft’s videos about insurance and borrowing money. You can preview both of those videos as embedded below.

Disclosure: I have a long-standing in-kind relationship with Common Craft.