A movie rental website charges $5.00 per month for membership and $1.25 per movie.

Marisa has $18.50 this month to spend on movie rentals. How many movies can she view this month?

She thinks she can afford 11 movies in 1 month. What mistake could she be making?

To solve this problem, I would transfer this word problem into an equation with variables.

let the variable m stand for the amount of movies andrew rents.

5.00+1.25m=16.25

Now that we have our equation, we can just solve it like any other equation.

To do this, first, we would subtract 5.00 from both sides, resulting in the equation

1.25m=11.25

Next, we would divide both sides by 1.25, resulting in your final answer

m=9.

This means that Andrew rented 9 movies if his total was 16.25