Melissa went shopping and spent half of her money on shoes, a third on a blouse, a tenth to take her boyfriend to lunch, and she came home with $12. How much money did she start out with?

Answer 1

We need to determine what fraction of her money she spent by adding the individual fractions spent on shoes, blouse and lunch:

1/2 + 1/3 + 1/10 = 15/30 + 10/30 + 3/30 = 28/30 = 14/15

So she spent 14/15 of her money, which means the $12 she has left is only 1/15 of the money she had.

So the money she had is $12 x 15 = $180.