Question 8113
Say you don't know how much Bobby had, so let's call his money B. The first thing I'd do is to find out who has more money. In this case, Bobby has more money, since he's got 1.5 times as much as Richard's got. So the equation for that would be B = 1.5R.


Some might say, but if Bobby has more money, shouldn't the 1.5 be multiplied to his amount? Actually, that's not right. If Bobby had more, then it wouldn't make sense to increase his money. Actually, since Richard has the lesser amount, his amount should be the one boosted to equal Bobby's. So it's B = 1.5R.


So we know that both of their money together is $225.00. So that translates to B + R = 225. We'll need to substitute 1.5R for the B in the B + R = 225 equation so that it'd only be in 1 variable so we could solve it.


1.5R + R = 225 <---------- equation after substituting 1.5R for B


2.5R = 225 <---- combined like terms


R = 90 <------ Richard had $90. So if Bobby had 1.5x more than Richard, Bobby would have $90*1.5 which is $135. Indeed, if you added up their money, $90 + $135, that would total the $225.