Share money using ratio
for 5th grade

Calculate shares of money using ratios

This topic is intended to help you learn or revise how to calculate shares of a total based on a given ratio. This type of calculation has many real-world applications like working out portions of a shopping bill or other shared cost.

So, if you have two people sharing $100 in the ratio 3:2, how do you work out what each of them gets? Add up the ratios then divide the amount by that total. That gives you the value for a ratio proportion of 1. If you want to know a ratio proportion of 3, multiply that amount by 3. For example

Bill and Ben share $100 in the ratio 3:2

Add up the ratio shares and divide the monetary amount by the total ratio shares. Then multiply by the given ratio share:

$100 ÷ 5 x 3 = $60 and $100 ÷ 5 x 2 = $40

So we can see that Bill gets $60 and Ben gets $40.