If Julia bought 8 t shirts she would be short 28$. If she bought 4 t shirts and 3 baseball hats she would have 17$ left. If each hat cost 5$ how much money did she have in the beginning?

Question

So t shirts must cost mor then 5$. I just can’t set this up into an equation and I am stumped. So there is 15$ in baseball hats and an unknown number for how much each t shirt is

Answer 1

suppose Julia had M money at the beginning, let T is the price for each t-shirt , we will have

M-8T=-28 (1)  M-4T-15=17 (2). {15 is the value for the 3 hats x $5 each} the (2) becomes M-4T=32 (3)

subtracting the (1) from (3) we get  4T=60  so T = 60/4  and T = 15

Now adding (1) and (3) we get  2M - 12T = 4  , plugging the value of T we have 2M - 180 = 4 --->>>

2M = 184  and M = 184/2   so M = 92 this is the money Julia had at the beginning $92.