Almost every teen wants a car, but can they really afford one? The lesson walks pupils through how to identify a budget, find all of the costs associated with car ownership, and determine if they should buy the car or keep looking.

Concepts

finance, consumer finance, taxes, insurance, cost analysis, estimation, budgeting

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Additional Tags

math

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Instructional Ideas

• Use bankrate.com to find loan rates for your area
• Have pupils search for a car that would fit in their budget; if they don't have a job, assign a reasonable number for if they did have a job so they can complete the assignment

Classroom Considerations

• Lesson requires prior knowledge of how to solve equations with exponents

Pros

• Provides guided practice problems, vocabulary, and answer keys
• Includes all associated costs: tag/title/tax, insurance, maintenance, gas, and repairs

Cons

• Formula on page two for negative exponents is incorrect; it should read a^-N = 1 / (a^N)