Question

In order to go to college, Hank goes from working full-time making $28,000 per year to working part-time at half the salary for two years. The cost of his education will be $5,000. If Hank makes $33,000 per year after getting his degree, approximately how many years will it take him to recover his investment?

Answer 1

The correct answer is:

6.6 years.

Explanation:

Since he goes from making $28,000 per year to $14,000 per year, he will lose $14,000 each year that he works part-time. He intends to do this for 2 years; this will be a loss of $14000(2) = $28,000.

We will add the cost of his degree to this: 28,000+5,000 = $33,000.

He will be making $33,000 per year when he graduates. This is 33000-28000 = 5000 more per year than he made before.

To find out how many years it will take him to recover his investment, we divide the amount he loses, 33,000, by the extra amount he will make per year, 5000:

33000/5000 = 6.6

Answer 2

I assume that he will spend 4 years in college and that the cost is per year: so the total cost of the education is :

(28 000/2)*4+5000*4=56000+10 000=66000 so his total cost of attending the college is 66 000 dollars

Every year he will make 33000-28000=5000. So every year he will make 5 000 dollars more.
which means that he needs 66000/5000=13.2 years to recover from his investment!