Under her cell phone plan, Ava pays a flat cost of $58 per month and $4 per gigabyte. She wants to keep her bill at $62.40 per month. How many gigabytes of data can she use while staying within her budget?

Answer 1

To determine how many gigabytes of data Ava can use while staying within her budget of $62.40 per month, we start by setting up the equation based on her cell phone plan.

Ava's total cost for the month is calculated using the formula:

$$\text{Total Cost}=\text{Flat Cost}+(\text{Cost per GB}\times \text{Number of GBs})$$

For Ava's plan:

• Flat Cost = $58
• Cost per GB = $4
• Total Cost = $62.40

We can substitute these values into the equation:

$$62.40=58+(4\times \text{Number of GBs})$$

To isolate the term involving the number of gigabytes, we subtract the flat cost from both sides:

$$62.40-58=4\times \text{Number of GBs}$$

This simplifies to:

$$4.40=4\times \text{Number of GBs}$$

Next, we solve for the number of gigabytes by dividing both sides by 4:

$$\text{Number of GBs}=\frac{4.40}{4}=1.1$$

Since gigabytes must typically be a whole number in cell phone plans, Ava can use at most 1 gigabyte of data while staying within her budget.

To verify:

If Ava uses 1 GB of data, the total cost would be:

$$\text{Total Cost}=58+(4\times 1)=58+4=62$$

If she were to use 2 GB of data, the cost would be:

$$\text{Total Cost}=58+(4\times 2)=58+8=66$$

So, the usage of 2 GB exceeds her budget.

Therefore, the maximum number of gigabytes Ava can use while staying within her budget of $62.40 is 1 GB.