Question

Kathleen Taylor is a high school student who has been investigating the possibility of mowing lawns for a summer job. She has a couple of friends she thinks she could hire on an hourly basis per job. The equipment, including two new lawnmowers and weedeaters, would cost her $500, and she estimates her cost per lawn, based on the time required to pay her friends to mow an average residential lawn (and not including her own labor) and gas for driving to the jobs and mowing, would be about $14.

a. If she charges customers $30 per lawn, how many lawns would she need to mow to breakeven?
b. Kathleen has 8 weeks available to mow lawns before school starts again, and she estimates that she can get enough customers to mow at least three lawns per day, 6 days per week. How much money can she expect to make over the summer?
c. Kathleen believes she can get more business if she lowers her price per lawn. If she lowers her price to $25 per lawn and increases her number of jobs to four per day (which is about all she can handle anyway), should she make this decision?

Answer 1

Kathleen Taylor

a. The break-even lawns she needs to mow is:

= 31.25 lawns.

b. She can then expect to make $4,320 in Service Revenue and $2,304 in net income.

c. She should not lower her price.

Step-by-step explanation:

a) Data and Calculations:

Cost of equipment = $500

Cost per lawn = $14

Price per lawn = $30

Contribution per lawn = $16 ($30 - $14)

Break-even point = $500/$16

= 31.25 lawns

Available period = 8 weeks

Number of lawns per day = 3

Working days per week = 6

Number of lawns per week = 18

Number of lawns for the period = 144 (18 * 8)

She can then expect to make $4,320 in Service Revenue and $2,304 in net income.

Number of lawns for the period = 192 (4 * 6 * 8)

Service revenue = $4,800 (192 * $25)

Net income = $2,112 (192 * $11)