Question

Cruz has d $10-bills and 3 fewer $20-bills than he has $10-bills. Write an algebraic expression to represent how much money Cruz has in dollars. Simplify the expression, if possible.

Answer 1

So Cruz has d amount of 10$ bills.
The value of this money is 10d in dollars.

He has 3 fewer than d amount of 20$ bills.
So he has (d-3) of these 20$ bills.
The value of this money is 20(d-3) in dollars.

The total money that Cruz has is the sum of these values that we've already calculated:
10d + 20(d-3)

From there, you'll need to distribute the 20 to each term in the second set of brackets, and then combine like-terms to simplify.