Today Aiden and I discussed the concept of interest. I asked him what he knew about it and he explained it as 1% or 5% of the money you would invest in a savings account. I clarified that for him and gave him additional examples. I explained to him how there is interest on credit cards, home/car loans, student loans, etc. We used the example of Aiden purchasing a $10,000 car. For simplicity, we said that Wells Fargo will lend Aiden the $10,000 but at an interest rate of 10%. Aiden determined then that would be $1,000. I explained to Aiden that would be the fee the bank is charging, for lending Aiden the money. Aiden would not only have to pay back the original $10,000, but also the additional $1,000 in interest. Aiden and I had an excellent conversation about the way this works. Then we pulled a problem from a textbook to show Aiden another example. We compared two bank offers and Aiden had to determine if $100 bonus was better or a 5% bonus was better. We set up the equation D+100=1.05D. Aiden got hung up on solving this equation when it came to combining like terms. He had trouble understanding why 1.05D-1D=0.05D. Tomorrow we will take a look at what it means to combine like terms. Aiden is curious why 3x-2x is just 1x or x. He seems to think the x's would cancel. We will clarify this tomorrrow.