At one store, matt saved $15 with a coupon for 75% off his total purchase. at another store, the $17 he spent on books is 85% of his total bill. how much did matt spend in all at the two stores?

For the first store, let's calculate what he paid. Since he saved 75% and saved $15, we can calculate his expense as being

So $5 in the first store.

For the next store we can calculate his expense by the rewriting 85% as 0.85 and calculate it as so

So $20 in the second store. Finally we can add the two together


So Matt spent a total of $25 on the two stores