Monica and michael both want to buy a scooter. monica has already saved $25 and plans to save five dollars per week until she can buy the scooter. michael has $16 and plans to save 8 dollars a week. in how many weeks or will monica and michael have saved the same amount of money? how much will each person have saved at that time?

Let's write equations for both Monica and Michael to represent what they should have.

Let's have W represent the number of weeks that pass.

So Monica already has $25 and wants to save $5 each week, her equation will be:
Monica = 25 + 5W

Michael has $16 and will save $8 each week, so his equation is:
Michael = 16 + 8W

We want to know the number of weeks where Monica and Michael have the same amount of money, so:

Monica = Michael or 25 + 5W = 16 + 8W

Solve for W:
1. subtract 16 from both sides to get 9 + 5W = 8W
2. subtract 5W from both sides to get 9 = 3W
3. divide both sides by 3 to get W = 3

So it takes 3 weeks for them to have saved the same amount of money. Plug W = 3 back into one of the equations (it doesn't matter which one) to figure out how much they saved.

16 + 8W = 16 + 8*(3) = $40