Question

Josie and her brother, Sean both have a job after school. For every $5.50 José earns, her brother earns $6.50. On Tuesday, they earned a total of $30.00. How much did Josie earn? How much did her brother earn?

Answer 1

We know that Josie and Sean both work the same number of hours. Since we know their pay rate, we can quickly create a formula with what we know so far:

5.50h + 6.50h = 30.00

Whereas 'h' stands for number of hours worked.
Simplify the equation:

12h = 30.00
Divide:
h = 30.00/12
Simplify;
h = 5.00/2
h = 2.50

They worked for 2.5 hours. Now that we know how many hours they worked, simplify multiply the number of hours by their pay rate:

Josie: 5.50 * 2.5 = $13.75
Sean: 6.50 * 2.5 = $16.25