How to Solve Word Problems Involving Money (for KIDS)

Hi and welcome to this video lesson about word problems involving money.

You are all familiar with the dreaded supermarket question that pops up on almost every test, so let’s tackle that once and for all.

A supermarket advertises a special price of $3.00 for 5 oranges. The regular price is $2.50 for 4 oranges. Compare the unit prices of sale and regular-priced oranges.

The problem wants us to find the two different prices for oranges and compare them, so let’s get started. First, we have to find the individual price of the fruit. That simply means dividing some numbers. Divide $3 by 5 for the sale price and divide $2.50 by 4 to get the normal price.

$0.60 for the sale price and $0.63 for the normal price (I rounded to the nearest cent).

Now, that was pretty easy, let’s try a practice problem.

Sasha wants to get a new outfit for school. She spent $39 on 3 shirts and 1 skirt. If skirts cost $24, how much did Sasha spend on each shirt?

This problem sounds scarier, but it’s not, I promise. Let’s start with what we know.
Sasha spent a total of $39 on clothes.
$24 of that was on 1 skirt
Sasha bought 3 shirts.

Let’s start by subtracting the $24 from the $39 she spent to find out how much she spent on shirts. Looks like $15. Now we also were told she bought 3 shirts. Now simply divide $15 by 3 shirts and you get $5 a shirt. Make sense?

Here’s one last problem, I’ll give you a moment to pause and try to figure it out by yourself.

T-shirts are sold in packages of multiple shirts. Three t-shirts are sold in one package for $8.00. Five t-shirts are sold in a second package for $12.00. Compare the price of a single t-shirt from the two packages.

The answer:

   $8/3 = $2.67     and     $12/5 = $2.40

I hope that helps. Thanks for watching this video lesson, and until next time, happy studying.