The SAT makers love writing math questions that involve money. This isn't so surprising: We all buy things and know how money works. But sometimes things can get a little complicated. For example, you might come across a question that asks you to calculate someone’s salary or how much someone has to pay for a gift, and multiple parts of these questions will be in terms of variables. We'll call these questions variable money problems.

The key to solving variable money problems is to not freak out about the variables. Most of the questions use fairly simple concepts; the test makers are just trying to throw you off by using two, three, or even more variables. Here's an example: