Let me guess: Ever since you woke up this morning, all you've been able to think about is algebraic equation solving involving money. Am I right? Well, you're in luck! That's exactly what we're going to look at today.

Here's a question:

The cost of renting a car from company A is $850 for up to and including 86 miles and $0.50 per mile thereafter. The cost of renting a car from company B is $3.50 per mile for any amount of miles. For a trip that lasts h miles, the cost of renting from company A is the same as the cost of renting from company B. If h is a positive integer greater than 86, what is the value of h?

A little while back, we introduced some money problems that involved variables in the question and answer. We’re going to continue on the theme of money problems with some questions about percent changes in price. We've all had practice figuring out the sale price on things we buy, but these questions have the potential to be tricky. The benefit is that there is a formula we can use:

Percent change = (y – x)/x

(where x = original price, and y = new price)