Andrea Porter spends 11% of her $54,000 yearly salary on car payments. How much must she pay for her car each month?

1 Answer
Jan 12, 2017

Andrea's monthly car payments $495

Explanation:

To find out how much Andrea pays for her car monthly we must first determine how much she pays for the entire year. We can write this part of the solution as:

What is 11% of $54,000?

"Percent" or "%" means "out of 100" or "per 100", Therefore 11% can be written as #11/100#.

When dealing with percents the word "of" means "times" or "to multiply".

Finally, lets call the yearly car payments we are looking for "y".

Putting this altogether we can write this equation and solve for #y# while keeping the equation balanced:

#y = 11/100 xx $54000#

#y = ($594000)/100#

#y = $5940#

Andrea pays $5,940 a year for car payments.

To determine how much she pays for her car each month we need to divide by 12, the number of months in the year.

We will call her monthly car payments #m#.

#m = ($5940)/12#

#m = $495#