Car / Auto Insurance Game - Personal Finance Lesson Plan

Welcome, teachers! This is by far one of my favorite activities from my entire 20+ year career. It’s a student favorite by the end of the game for sure. It used to be a pretty good activity until I introduced the salvation card a few semesters ago. The salvation card put it over the top. You’ll have cheers; you’ll have groans. Students will feel the exhilaration of avoiding major costs and the defeat of being underinsured.

Essentially, students pick a car at the start of class.

Then, they decide how to insure their vehicle, balancing monthly premiums with required and optional coverage.

After they’ve picked their car and coverage, simply show them the slideshow, slide by slide. Each slide has either a monthly premium or an insurance event (like hitting a mailbox).

Students track expenses along the way of how much they’ve spent on insurance and events. The student with the lowest total at the end is your winner - either because they were well-covered or lucky.

Luck comes into play because each insurance even offers “salvation”. Salvation cards offer students the opportunity to ignore an event and are based on fun characteristics (they have a blue car, or are born in the first half of the year, or have a hoodie on today).

The entire production takes a solid class period of 60 minutes. You can stop whenever the end of class nears, but I usually make it through the entire deck of slides in about 55 minutes. Chances are, you’ll run out of time during your first try, but that’s ok. Collect their score sheets on the way out and finish the next day or just move to the debrief.

Digital file includes links to all needed resources for the simulation: Vehicle Cards, Insurance Coverage Selection Sheet, Score Sheet, and Salvation Cards. The last page includes links to Google Docs/Sheets so you can make a copy and edit or PDF files so you can print and go. Good luck - it's a fun one!