Question

You made two deposits to your bank account this month. One deposit was $24.61, and the second deposit was $16.49. Your balance at the end of the month is $72.31, and you made no withdrawals. Write and evaluate an expression for your balance at the beginning of the month.
$72.31 + $24.61 + $16.49; $113.41
$72.31 + ($24.61 – $16.49); $80.43
$72.31 – $24.61 – $16.49; $31.21
$72.31 – ($24.61 – $16.49); $64.19

Answer 1

The correct answer is:

$72.31 – $24.61 – $16.49; $31.21

Explanation:

We know we end the month with $72.31.

We made two deposits during the month and no other activity.  This means if we take the amounts of the deposits away from the total at the end of the month, we can find how much we had at the beginning of the month:

72.31-24.61-16.49 = 31.21

Answer 2

Your balance at the beginning of the month is calculated by subtracting the sum of the amounts you deposited in the two accounts from the balance at the end of the month. This means that at the beginning of the month, there was no deposit that has been made yet. Mathematically, this can be expressed as,
                            $72.31 - ($24.61 + $16.49) ; $31.51