Monica and Michael both want to buy a scooter. Monica has already saved $25 and plans to save five dollars per week until she can buy the scooter. Michael has $16 and plans to save 8 dollars a week. in how many weeks or will Monica and Michael have saved the same amount of money? How much will each person Have saved at that time?

Question

Francis Quinn

Mathematics

6 January, 15:56

Monica and Michael both want to buy a scooter. Monica has already saved $25 and plans to save five dollars per week until she can buy the scooter. Michael has $16 and plans to save 8 dollars a week. in how many weeks or will Monica and Michael have saved the same amount of money? How much will each person Have saved at that time?

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Answers (1)

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Janet Bell · Answer 1

Let's write equations for both Monica and Michael to represent what they should have.

Let's have W represent the number of weeks that pass.

So Monica already has $25 and wants to save $5 each week, her equation will be:

Monica = 25 + 5W

Michael has $16 and will save $8 each week, so his equation is:

Michael = 16 + 8W

We want to know the number of weeks where Monica and Michael have the same amount of money, so:

Monica = Michael or 25 + 5W = 16 + 8W

Solve for W:

1. subtract 16 from both sides to get 9 + 5W = 8W

2. subtract 5W from both sides to get 9 = 3W

3. divide both sides by 3 to get W = 3

So it takes 3 weeks for them to have saved the same amount of money. Plug W = 3 back into one of the equations (it doesn't matter which one) to figure out how much they saved.

16 + 8W = 16 + 8 * (3) = $40