Question

Michelle and Cody have summer jobs selling newspaper subscriptions door-to-door, but their compensation plans are different. Michelle earns a base wage of $8 per hour, as well as $1 for every subscription that she sells. Cody gets $3 per subscription sold, in addition to a base wage of $4 per hour. If they each sell a certain number of subscriptions in an hour, they will end up earning the same amount. How much would each one earn?

Answer 1

Explanation:

Let x represent the certain number of of subscriptions in an hour that each of them would sell so that they will end up earning the same amount.

Michelle earns a base wage of $8 per hour, as well as $1 for every subscription that she sells. This means that the total cost of selling x subscriptions in an would be

x + 8

Cody gets $3 per subscription sold, in addition to a base wage of $4 per hour. This means that the total cost of selling x subscriptions in an hour would be

3x + 4

For both of them to earn the same amount,

x + 8 = 3x + 4

3x - x = 8 - 4

2x = 4

x = 4/2 = 2

They would earn the same amount when they sell 2 subscriptions.

The amount that each would earn is

2 + 8 = $10